Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/231

 INTELLECTUAL LIFE 197 While it is true that Constantinople had for centuries produced few ideas and little of original value in literature, it had rendered great service to humanity by preserving the Greek classics. Its methods of thought, its civilisation as well as its literature, were on the model of classical antiquity, but these were all modified by Christianity. Part of the mission of the empire had been to save during upwards of a thousand years, amid the irruptions of Goths, Huns and Vandals, Persians and Arabs, Slavs and Turks, the traditions and the literary works of Greece. It had done this part of its work well. Amid the obscurity of the Middle Ages in the West, Constantinople had always possessed writers who threw light on the history of the empire in the East. No European people, remarks a recent writer, possesses an historical literature as rich as do the Greeks. From Herodotus to Chalcondylas the chain is not broken. 1 The Greek historians of the period with which the present work is concerned, Pachymer, Cantacuzenus, Gregoras, Ducas, Critobulus, and Phrantzes are in literary merit far superior to the contemporary chroniclers of the West. Though their works are written in a style which aims at reproducing classical Greek and imitating classical models, they were not intended merely for Churchmen. Nor was Constantinople rich only in historians. Though intellectual life was never wanting in the city, civiiisa- many of whose people possessed the quick, ingenious, and pierc- modem, ing intellect of the Greek race, the reader of the later historians feels that the civilisation amid which they lived was not that of modern times. It is difficult to realise what it was like. It has often been compared with that of Eussia, and writers of reputation have spoken of that empire as preserving the discussions theologiques, appliquees uniquement a la recherche de l'essence divine, a Pexplication du fait divin, du mystere, prennent chez eux un carac- tere exclusivement scientifique.' Montreuil, Histoire du droit byzantin, i. 418. 1 Krumbaeher, Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litt&ratur, p. 219, says : * Kein Volk, die Chinesen vielleicht ausgenommen, besitzt eine so reiehe historische Litteratur wie die Griechen. In ununterbrochener Eeihenfolge geht die Uberlieferung von Herodot bis auf Laonikos Chalkondylas. Die Griechen und Byzantiner haben [die Chronik des Ostens iiber zwei Jahrtausende mit gewis- senhafter Treue fortgef iihrt.'