[...] the model of Charlemagne's renewed Roman empire was not Augustus, but Justinian, the devout Catholic depicted in the mosaics of San Vitale. Jus… - Peter C. Brownell

800 miles south of the Byzantine frontier, in Mecca, a city of the Hejaz, a middle-aged man, after a mediocre career as a merchant, began wandering disconsolately among the sinister hills outside the city. In C.E.610, this man, Muhammad, began to have visions. He narrated these visions in metrical form and constituted his Qur'an, "recitation". Strengthened by these experiences he gathered a community around himself: the Umma, the "people of Allah". Within twenty years Muhammad and his Umma had established themselves as rulers of Mecca and nearby Medina, and as the main party of the Arabian Peninsula. (Part 2, chapter III, p. 155)

The new mayor has no intention of discriminating against anyone. I think the issue relative to the personnel policy has been settled by the City Council. It is not my intention to try to reverse or overturn that policy.

Having supported the relationship between the visible and the invisible, between the inexpressible internal world and its significant manifestation in the external world, having asserted that the soul was able to give meaning to natural things: this was the service rendered by Plotinus to his contemporaries and successors. (Part One, chapter II, p. 59)