Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/158

Rh the stage. His dramas are occupied with the exhibition of j the great deeds of his patrons, or resemble in some respects our Moralities, making characters of the various virtues.

The Byzantine period produced a considerable number of hymn writers. Among them may be mentioned Gertnanus, who was patriarch of Constantinople in the reign of Leo the Isaurian ; Theodorus Studites, a theologian of some mark (759-826) ; the emperors Constantino Porphyrogenitus and Leo the king; and Photius, patriarch of Constantinople. The hymn writers who stand highest are Cosmas, who flourished in the 8th century, and whom W. Christ calls &quot; princeps melodorum Graecoium&quot;; Joannes Damascenus, a contemporary of Cosmas ; and Theophanes 6 FpaTrros, who lived nearly a hundred years after Cosmas (see Anthologia Grceca Carminum Christi- anorum adornaverunt W. Christ et M. Paranikas, Leipsic, 1871).

The Byzantines occupied themselves with collections of poems, but the works of Cephalas and Planudes Maximus of this nature have already been discussed in the article.

When W3 pass from poetry to prose we meet with the same W ant of creative power. The Byzantines collect the writings of others and annotate, but they give us no original works. They performed two services to literature. They handed down the forms of literary expression, and l&amp;gt;y their indefatigable energy in excerpting and embodying in their own works the works of others, they have preserved for us many valuable documents of antiquity, or at least portions of them. During the Byzantine period there were j also various phases of literary life. After the death of j Justinian literary activity became gradually less, until in j the time of the Iconoclasts intellectual culture was repressed, manuscripts were destroyed, and literature fell into disre pute and neglect. A revival took place under the Mace donian dynasty, but when the Latin empire was established in Constantinople, a relapse into semi-barbarism again took place. Under the Palseologi the literary spirit once more came to life. Amidst these changes it was impossible for a vigorous creative literature to flourish, and the bright periods are mainly characterized by efforts to destroy the effects of the previous dark era by gathering together all kinds of information. Hence arose the compilations of Porphyrogenitus that have been already mentioned, and similar attempts were made at similar periods. Several of the Byzantines attained to high eminence in the cultivation of science, but sometimes their exertions took a fruitless direction, especially when they aimed at dis covering the method of converting the baser metals into gold. It is in the study of grammar, in the production of lexicons and the annotation of the classical writers, that their best men have gained for themselves a name. The works of the writers on these subjects are of no interest to the common reader, but they furnish the scholar with many attractive problems. Who were the authors from whom the Byzantines borrowed 1 How far are their works inter polated 1 ? How far are the original authorities mutilated 1 ? These and such like inquiries crop up in connexion with almost every one of these writings. The writers who are best known as contributing to our knowledge of the ancients are Tzetzes, Eustathius, Moschopulus, Thomas Magister, Joannes Pediasimus, and Demetrius Triclinius, Tzetzes (probably the same word as Caecius) lived in Con stantinople about the year 1180. His Chiliades have been already mentioned. He wrote notes on Homer, Hesiod, and JEschylus, but he was especially copious on Aristophanes,

Eustathius is well known to scholars for an elaborate commentary on Homer. He was brought up in Constanti nople, and in 1160 became archbishop of Thessalonica and in 1174: archbishop of Myra in Lycia. Besides his labours on Homer he wrote many theological and several historical works. Manuel Moschopulus belonged to the 13th century. He wrote many works on different points of grammar, and scholia on Pindar, the Tragedians, and Theocritus. Thomas Magister of Thessalonica flourished in the reign of Andronicus II. (1283-1332), and composed articles on ancient literary history, and scholia on ^Eschylus and other Greek writers. Joannes Pediasimus, who lived towards the end of the 14th century, is best known by his scholia on Hesiod ; and Triclinius, who taught grammar in Con stantinople at the same period, wrote scholia on Hesiod, Pindar, and the Tragedians. Nothing can exceed the stupidity of these writers and their fellow scholiasts of the Byzantine era, They misunderstand the acute remarks of their Alexandrian predecessors or bury them in verbiage. They are utterly uncritical in their discussion of historical questions ; they are continually going wrong in their gram matical expositions ; and they are passionately fond of nonsense. Perhaps nowhere, to take one instance, in the whole of literature could wilder etymologies be found in greater numbers than in the scholia on the Plutus of Aristo phanes. Yet these men thought highly of their work, and Triclinius tells us, in regard to a trivial book which he wrote on metres, that he accomplished the task only through divine inspiration. Notwithstanding this, they have pre served for us within the quantities of rubbish many valuable facts and expositions derived from earlier writers.

Ignatius, deacon in the reign of Michael II. (820-829), Gregorius, archbishop of Corinth in the second half of the 12th century, Holobolus, in the reign of Michael VIII., and Joannes Glycas, patriarch of Constantinople in 1316, are the principal writers on grammar. Of these Gregorius is best known, for his work on the Greek dialects, though full of mistakes, has deservedly attracted the attention of scholars.

Of the writers of lexicons Suidas is the best known. He flourished in the 10th century. His work contains not only explanations of words but biographies of men. It is an undigested mass of statements which are often contradictory, but is of great value, for he has incorporated facts and expositions from early writers possessed of accurate knowledge. A full account of Suidas, and a discussion of all the questions connected with him, are given by Bernhardy in the prolegomena to his edition of the Lexicon. The Etymologicum Magnum is another important work of the Byzantine period, having been compiled in the 11th century. The appellation magnum or ^e ya does not belong to it originally, but was added by Musurus, its first editor, or Calliergis, its first printer. Gaisford in his edition has discussed this and other matters concerning the Etymologicum. A much smaller work by Philemon is a Technological Dictionary, written in the second half of the 12th century. Among the lexicon-writers is Photius, who was patriarch of Constantinople, and died in an Armenian convent about the year 891. Photius was a man of marked individuality, and his history is mixed up with that of his country. A more detailed account of him will therefore be found in a separate article. Porson prepared an edition of the Lexicon, which was published after his death by DoV^t. The Leipsic edition contains a review by Blomfield (Ed in. liev. y xlii., 1813) of Hermann's edition of Photius, in which the English reader will find a full discussion of the sources and value of the Lexicon. Photius also prepared a work gene rally called Photii Bibliotheca, containing extracts and notices of 280 books which he read while acting as ambassador in Syria. The nature of this work awaits more minute investi gation than it has yet received ; but there can scarcely be a doubt that some of the articles are the productions of a dishonest man, or of a late interpolator, or of both. His Letters, recently edited by Valettas, are of great importance for a knowledge of the times.