Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/465

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 443 disciples of the prophet were never tempted by a profane desire to study the laws or language of the idolaters ; nor did the sim- plicity of their primitive manners receive the slightest alteration from their intercourse in peace and war with the unknown strangers of the West. The Greeks, who thought themselves proud, but who were only vain, shewed a disposition somewhat less inflexible. In the efforts for the recovery of their empire they emulated the valoui', discipline, and tactics of their antag- onists. The modern literature of the West they might justly despise ; but its fi'ee spirit Avould instruct them in the rights of man ; and some institutions of public and private life were adopted from the French. The correspondence of Constanti- nople and Italy diffused the knowledge of the Latin tongue ; and several of the fathers and classics were at length honoured with a Greek version. ^^ But the national and religious prejudices of the Orientals were inflamed by persecution ; and the reign of the liatins confirmed the separation of the two churches. If we compare, at the aera of the crusades, the Latins of Europe with the Greeks and Arabians, their respective degrees of knowledge, industry and art, our rude ancestors must be content with the third rank in the scale of nations. Their suc- cessive improvement and pi*esent superiority may be ascribed to a peculiar energy of character, to an active and imitative spirit, imknown to their more polished rivals, who at that time were in a stationar}^ or retrograde state. With such a disposition, the Latins should have derived the most early and essential benefits from a series of events which opened to their eyes the prospect of the world, and introduced them to a long and frequent inter- course with the more cultivated regions of the East. The first and most obvious progress was in trade and manufactures, in the arts which are strongly prompted by the thirst of wealth, the calls of necessity, and the gratification of the sense or vanity. Among the crowd of unthinking fanatics, a captive or a pilgrim might sometimes observe the superior refinements of Cairo and given by Huet (do Interpretationeet de Claris Interpretibus, p. 131-135). Maximus Planudes, a monk of Constantinople (a.D. 1327-1353 [born c. 1260, died 1310]), has translated Caesar's Commentaries, the Somnium Scipionis, the Metamorphoses and Heroides of Ovid, [the proverbial philosophy of the elder Cato, Boethius' De Consolatione], &c. (Fabric. Bib. Grsec. torn. x. p. 533 [ed. Harl. xi. 682 sqq. ; Krumbacher, Gesch. der byz. Litt. 543 sqq. The Letters of Planudes have been edited by M. Treu (1890), who has established the chronology of his hfe (Zur Gesch, der Ueberlieferung von Plutarchs Moralia, 1877)].)
 * A short and superficial account of these versions from Latin into Greek is