That small fraction of the Decline and fall which dealt with the Byzantine Empire in its early medieval heyday had a profound effect on subsequent scholarly explorations of the subject, especially in the English-speaking world. The rhetorical artifice with which Gibbon expounded his views worked best on those nurtured in his native language. For who, apart from those with an extreme aversion to the Latinate mode of English prose, could fail to respond to the rolling periods, the rich vocabulary, the grave and not-so-grave irony of Gibbon? His Byzantium was projected onto the collective mind of the educated classes – an oriental despotism presenting ‘a dead uniformity of abject vices’, in which the effects of civil or domestic slavery were compounded by ‘the spiritual despotism, which shackles not only the actions but even the thoughts of the prostrate votary’. His greatest anglophone successor, J. B. Bury, was happy to assume the role of scholiast to the Decline and fall, confining his own independent contributions to Byzantine studies mainly to articles and two important monographs on the ninth century. The general trend, though, has been one of reaction. British, American and Australian Byzantinists have sought out the distinguishing features of Byzantium, sometimes approaching the position of Arnold Toynbee who made it the one thing it evidently was not, a free-standing civilization, distinct from its late Roman predecessor. They have rushed to the defence of Byzantine culture, even if their case has often rested more on the historical interest of texts and artefacts than their literary or artistic merit.