Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/127

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 107 city was gross and barbarous : a more correct and elaborate style distinguished the discourse^ or at least the compositions, of the church and palace, which sometimes affected to copy the purity of the Attic models. In our modern education, the painful though necessary attain- Decay of ment of two languages, which are no longer living, may consume geniM the time and damp the ardour of the youthful student. The poets and orators were long imprisoned in the barbarous dialects of our Western ancestors, devoid of harmony or grace ; and their genius, without precept or example, was abandoned to the rude and native powers of their judgment and fancy. But the Greeks of Constantinople, after purging away the impurities of their vulgar speech, acquired the free use of their ancient lan- guage, the most happy composition of human art, and a familiar knowledge of the sublime masters who had pleased or instructed the first of nations. But these advantages only tend to aggra- vate the reproach and shame of a degenerate people. They held in their lifeless hands the riches of their fathers, without inheriting the spii'it which had created and improved that sacred patrimony : they read, they praised, they compiled, but their languid souls seemed alike incapable of thought and action. In the revolution of ten centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea has been added to the speculative systems of antiquity, and a succession of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers of the next servile generation. Not a single composition of history, philosophy, or literature, has been saved from oblivion by the intrinsic beauties of style or sentiment, of original fancy, or even of successful imitation. In prose, the least offensive of the Byzantine writers are absolved from censure by their naked and unpresuming simplicity ; but the orators, most eloquent ^^^ in their own conceit, are the farthest removed from the models whom they affect to emulate. In every page our taste and reason are wounded by the choice of gigantic and obsolete words, a stiff and intricate phraseology, [Eudocia Macrembolitissa, the wife of Constantine X., must be deposed from the place which she has hitherto occupied in Byzantine hterature, since it has been established that the 'ituiia (Violarium) was not compiled by her, but nearly five centuries later (c. 1543) by Constantine Palaeokappa. See P. Pulch, de Eudociae quod fertur Violario (Strassburg, 1880) and Konstantin Palaeocappa, in Hermes I?) 177 -f^?- (1882). Cp. Krumbacher, op. cit. p. 579.] "8 To censure the Byzantine taste, Ducange (Frefat. Gloss. Grajc. p. 17) strings the authorities of Aulus Gellius, Jerom, Pelronius, George Hamartolus, Longinus ; who give at once the piecept and the example.