Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/128

 108 THE DECLINE AND FALL the discord of images, the childish play of false or unseasonable ornament, and the painful attempt to elevate themselves, to astonish the reader, and to involve a trivial meaning in the smoke of obscurity and exaggeration. Their prose is soaring to the vicious affectation of poetry: their poetry is sinking below the flatness and insipidity of prose. The tragic, epic, and lyric muses were silent and inglorious ; the bards of Constantinople seldom rose above a riddle or epigram, a panegyric or tale ; thej'^ forgot even the rules of prosody ; and, with the melody of Homer yet sounding in their ears, they confound all measure of feet and syllables in the impotent strains which have received the name of political or city verses. ^^^ The minds of the Greeks were bound in the fetters of a base and imperious superstition, which extends her dominion round the circle of profane science. Their understandings were bewildered in metaphysical controversy ; in the belief of visions and miracles, they had lost all principles of moral evidence ; and their taste was vitiated by the homilies of the monks, an absurd medley of declamation and scripture. Even these contemptible studies were no longer dignified by the abuse of superior talents ; the leaders of the Greek church were humbly content to admire and copy the oracles of anti- quity, nor did the schools or pulpit produce any rivals of the fame of Athanasius and Chrysostom.^-" Want of In all the pursuits of active and speculative life, the emulation national „ i-iii i />i r ^ emniaticn oi statcs and individuals is the most powerrul spring oi the efforts and improvements of mankind. The cities of ancient Greece were cast in the happy mixture of union and independ- ence, which is repeated on a larger scale, but in a looser form, by the nations of modern Europe: the union of language, re- ^'"The versus poliiici, those common prostitutes, as, from their easiness, they are styled by Leo AUatius, usually consist of fifteen syllables. They are used by Constanline Manasses, John Tzetzes, &c. (Ducange, Gloss. Latin, torn. iii. p. i. p. 345, 346, edit. Basil, 1762). [All the rerses which abandoned prosody and con- sidered only accent may be called political ; but the most common form was the line of fifteen syllables with a diaeresis after the eighth syllable ; the rhythm was : — ^~- ^-^ ^~ ^— I ^-^ ^— ^— ^ Proverbs in this form existed as early as the sixth century ; and in the Ceremonies of Constantine Porphyrogennetos we find a popular spring song in political verse, beginning (p. 367) : — ihc TO eap TO "jXyKV | iraAti^ eTravaTeWti. The question has been much debated whether this kind of verse arose out of the ancient trochaic, or the ancient iambic, tetrameter. Cp. Krumbacher, op. cif. p. 650-1.] 120 As St. Bernard of the Latin, so St. John Damascenus in the viiith century is revered as the last father of the Greek, church.