ABSTRACT
The Eastern Empire survived the Western for another thousand years, kept going by the most interesting and most successful bureaucracy the world has ever seen. Many of the men who shaped policies in the offices of the Byzantine emperors were of the intellectual cream of their times. They dealt with a host of legal, monetary, commercial, agrarian, and fiscal problems. We cannot help feeling that they must have philosophized about them. If they did, however, the results have been lost. No piece of reasoning that would have to be mentioned here has been preserved.
