Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/159

Rh  Several scholars of the Byzantine period wrote on the music and metres of the ancients. Their works abound in sr?orSj b u t they preserve fragments of earlier writers which are interesting and valuable. The work of Psellus the younger, called Swray/m ets TO.S Tro-apa? /xa^/xartKas f7ricm//Aas, contains large fragments of Aristoxenus (West- phal, Fragmente der Rhythmiker, supplement to the first volume of his Metrik}; and Manuel Bryennius (about the year 1330) wrote three books on harmonics, which contain among other things an exposition of the later Byzantine musical system (see Westphal, Metrilc, vol. i. p. 319).

Of the rhetoricians only a very few deserve mention. Joannes Doxopater, who flourished in the reign of Alexius I., Comnenus (1081-1118), wrote several works of a rhetorical nature, which are to be found in Walz s Rhetores Greed. All that can be said of them is that they prove that he was a man of culture and refinement, and did not deserve the j neglect and poverty which fell to his lot. A cluster of j rhetoricians appeared in the reigns of Michael VIII. and Andronicus II. , of whom the principal were Georgius of Cyprus, Nicephorus Chumnus, and Theodoras of Hyrtace. The emperor Manuel II., Palseologus, wrote several works of the nature of essays, and a large number of letters, several of which were addressed to Demetrius Cydones of Thessa- lonica, the author of a treatise on the Contempt of Death which has attracted some attention.

The study of philosophy was, generally speaking, neglected, but there were some who acquired renown as philosophers. Foremost amongst these was Michael Psellus the younger. He was born about the year 1018, and die.l shortly after the year 1105, after a chequered career. He was called by the men of his own age &quot; Chief of Philo sophers.&quot; His works range over the entire field of human learning. He wrote on the sciences, mathematical, physical, medical, on grammar and metres and music, on the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, on psychology and dialec tic ; and very recently Sathas has edited a work of his called A Century of Byzantine History, which entitles him to a place among historians, a series of his letters which throw much light on the life of the Byzantines, and various discourses, panegyric and funereal. He lost the favour of the court and was supplanted by Joannes Italus, who also succeeded to the title of &quot; Chief of Philosophers.&quot; Several of his scholars attained distinction as authors, or rather compilers, of commentaries on the Greek philosophers.

The theologians were to a large extent philosophers. The most famous among them was John of Damascus, who lived in the reign of Leo the Isaurian (718-741). He wrote on a great variety of subjects, theological and philo sophical. The work by which he is best known is his Sacra Parallela, in which he has collected numerous passages from the writings of the fathers on such topics as repentance, faith, &c. The work is valuable as containing fragments of works which are not now extant. Alzog calls Damascenus the last of the Greek theologians. In subse quent times few appear worthy of attention, and it may suffice here to mention Nicephorus Callistus, &quot; the Ecclesi astical Thucydides,&quot; who lived in the 14th century. He compiled an Ecclesiastical History from Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomenus, and the other earlier ecclesiastical historians, endeavouring at the same time to make his style more elegant than that oi his predecessors.

We find almost no attempt at light literature in prose during the Byzantine period. Only one work has come down to us of this nature, The Loves of Hysmine and Hysminias, by Eustathius the Macrembolite. Hilberg, the last editor of the work, has tried to show with some success that Eustathius lived some time between 852 and 988.^ The work is full of imitations, and displays no in ventive power.

1em (J. D.)

 

In narrating the history of modern Greek literature several difficulties of a peculiar nature present themselves which do not emerge in an account of the literature of previous periods. The literature is no longer homogeneous, and we have to answer for ourselves the question whether we are to record the literary efforts made by Greeks or the literary efforts made in Greek. If we adopt the first course, we have to take notice of books written in Italian, French, German, and English, as well as in Greek, for the Greeks like the Jews were, during the three centuries of Turkish domination, a dispersed people. They found refuge far away from their native land ; they spoke the languages of strange peoples, and, when they published books, frequently used these languages. Few, however, forgot their native tongue, and there are consequently very few authors who, however copiously they may have written in the languages of the countries in which they settled, did not leave at least one work written in Greek. Even since the kingdom of Greece has been established, many of her most distinguished men have written some of their best works in French, German, or English, in order to obtain a wider audience than they could expect if they had used modern Greek. We have to divide even those who used Greek into two classes, those who used the ancient language and those who used the modern, though many have used both forms. The ancient language was still the literary language at the time of the capture of Constantinople, and the use of it as a vehicle of literature has been handed down in unbroken tradition to the present day. This has been specially the case with ecclesiastical writers. The church service is in ancient Greek. The New Testament is still read in the original language in Greek churches. The learned priests were familiar with the ancient language, and in learned treatises felt bound by a firmly impressed tradition to use only the language which the great fathers of the church had used. Cultivated Greeks in all lands still continued to make verses in imitation of the ancients. A change took place when Greece revived in the 19th century. All the great writers felt that it was pedantic to adopt many of the old forms of inflexion and construction, that, in one word, the ancient language was not fitted to be the vehicle of modern civilization. They therefore resolved to adapt it, to omit what might fetter the full and free expression of modern thought, but to retain at the same time the body and substance of the language, And hence arose a form of the language which is practically identical with the ancient, but transfused with modern ideas, and fitted for the clear and rapid expression of modern literature. The influence of the ancient language on the modern is manifest in every part of it. And it could not be otherwise. Education is spread over every corner of free Greece. But in education the Greek child does not learn the grammar of the modern language but of the ancient. He often reads ancient books, and every cultivated Greek becomes as familiar with Xenophon and Plutarch as an Englishman is The with Shakespeare and Milton. Before entering on the mode history of modern Greek literature, it is necessary to trace the modern language through its various stages. Historians