“In another of history's terrible ironies, the barbarian influence on Western Christianity enlivened it beyond anything the diluted Greeks of Byzantium were now capable of. The mad barbarians pushed Western Christianity into retaining some of the plastic abundance, the inventive plasticity, the fathomless versatility that had once been incomparably characteristic of the Greeks.”

—  Thomas Cahill

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

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Thomas Cahill 58
American scholar and writer 1940

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