Try this thought experiment: Mentally chart the main phases of European history to 1500. If you're like most of us, you probably moved from classical Greece through Alexander the Great, from the Rome of the Caesars to the Renaissance, with a detour into the long post-Roman hiatus known as the Dark and Middle Ages. But this storyline is woefully incomplete, even misleading. Why? It leaves out Byzantium.             
Reuploaded Thanks to floarea