Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/162

Rh Turks began to rule in Greece, and a considerable list might be adduced, including the names of Apostolios, whose collection of Greek Proverbs is well known to scholars, and his son Arsenius, metropolitan of Monemvasia. Among the few who still used the Greek language for literary purposes Leo Allatius is prominent. His Greek verses show skill and cleverness. Mention also should be made of Constantine Rhodocanakis, honorary physician to Charles II. of England. He wrote verses on the return of Charles to England not without merit (see a very curious life of C. Rhodocanakis published in Athens, 1872).

We now return to tho literature in the modern language, and here again we have to go back several centuries before the fall of Constantinople. We have already seen that the earliest production is the Exploits of Diyenis Acritas, so called because he was the son of a Turk and a Greek, and because he spent a large portion of his time in watching the frontiers. There is reason to believe that his adven- tures formed the subject of poems in many parts of Greece. ! Some have called him a Cyprian Hercules, and believe him a kind of mythological character, while others regard him ] as a genuinely historical personage. The poem published by Legrand describing his adventures is imperfect. Many of the incidents are of a purely romantic nature. From the 12th to the 16th century many poems were composed in the popular language. Our knowledge of these works is still incomplete. Several of them lie hidden in the great libraries of Europe ; but much is now doing to increase our knowledge. Many have been already published in the collections of Mavrophrydis, Sathas (avtKooTa), Wagner (Carmina Medii JEvi), and especially Legrand. They all breathe the spirit of chivalry, and are full of romantic adventures and tales of love. M. Gidel has the special merit of drawing attention to these poems in his Etudes sur la Litterature Grecque Moderne (Paris, 1866), and he has gone further into the subject in his Nouvdles Etudes sur la Litterature Grecque Moderne (Paris, 1878). He has proved that the romances which delighted the knights of France and Italy found their way probably through the Genoese and Venetians and some French families into Greece, especially into the islands. The Greek minstrels took them and adapted them for their Greek audiences. He has given an analysis of the various poems and com- : pared them with the Western forms. The most important in modern Greek are &quot;The Old Knight&quot; (12th century), a tale of the Round Table ; &quot; The Story of Belthander and Chrysantza (probably 12th century); &quot;The Loves of Lybhtros and Rhodamne &quot; (probably 12th century) ; &quot;The War of Troy,&quot; taken from the Guerre de Troie of Benoit de Sainte-Morc, who wrote in the second half of the 1 2th cen- ; tury (the Greek translation was made some time before the fall of Constantinople); &quot;Flore and Blancheneur &quot;; and the &quot; History of Imberios and jMargarona.&quot; There are various other poems belonging to this period of a different character, such as the &quot; Oracles &quot; of Leo the Wise, imita tions of Reineke Fuchs, and &quot; Physiologus.&quot; The history of Alexander the Great was a favourite theme, and there is a Greek version of Apollonius of Tyre. We do not know the authors of any of these poems. But about the time of the fall of Constantinople we meet with the names of some versifiers. Papaspondylos Zoticos described the battle of Varna (1444) in verse, and from the poem we gather that he was present at it. We have three poems written by Georgilas Limenitis (1450-1500), one &quot;On the Deeds of the great Commander of the Romans, Belisarius ; &quot; another &quot; On the Plague in Rhodes,&quot; which took place in 1498 ; and a third, &quot; A Complaint on the Fall of Constantinople.&quot; Some have been inclined to think that this last cannot be the work of Georgilas. From an examination of the poems of Georgilas and some other phenomena, Corais, in the pro legomena to the second volume of the &quot;ATO.KTO., came to the conclusion that rhyme was unknown to Greek poems before the fall of Constantinople, and had become established as r, feature of them when Georgilas wrote on the Rhodian plague. Gidel has accepted this as giving a clue to ho dates of Greek poems. A third versifier was Jacobos Trivolis of Corfu, who lived in the beginning of the 16th century. He wrote the history of Tagiapiera, a Venetian noble, and the history of the king of Scotland and the queen of England, a tale taken from Boccaccio. Almost none of these poems have poetical merit ; but they are interesting as specimens of the popular language, and curious as throw ing light on the manners and thoughts of the Greeks of those days.

From the earliest times the Greeks wers in the habit of i-iistc putting into verse any remarkable occurrence that stirred r oeni their feelings. Crusius tells us that in his time Greeks, especially on the islands, contended with each other in repeating or extemporizing verses, and the custom has re mained down to the present day. Accordingly the Greek popular poetry is rich in historical subjects : we have already noticed the poems on the battle of Varna and on the taking of Constantinople. There is also a chronicle of the con quest of the Morea (given by Ellissen in his Analectcn). There are several lamentations over the fall of Constanti nople. And the klephtic ballads relate real adventures. Almost every leader in the war of independence had his song in his honour. Some have thought that the largest portion of the ballad poetry of the Greeks is recent ; but Legrand s collection lately published shows that some of them belong to very early times, being edited from a manu script of the 16th century. There are two or three famous historical poems connected with the islands. Especially noteworthy is one on the exploits of Mercuries Boua by Coromeos.

There are three poems belonging to the 16th and 17th Earl: centuries which have obtained wide popularity among the popu Greeks. The first is the Erotocritos, the epic poem of P oc modern Greece, of about 11,400 lines. Of its author Vincenzo Cornaro, a Cretan, we know almost nothing ; but it is probable that he belonged to a noble Venetian family and lived in the middle or towards the end of the 16th cen tury. The tale is one of two lovers who, after many trials of their fidelity to each other, are at last united and blessed. There is genuine poetry in the work. Many of the scenes are charming, and, as M. Gidel remarks, there is not a single situation which shocks propriety nor a single senti ment which is not modest and of rare purity. The second poem is a drama called Erophile, and its theme is the love of Panaretos and Erophile. The author of it was Georgios Chortakis, who was brought up in Rhethymnos, a Cretan town, and lived towards the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century. It was thought to be nearly the only drama of this period; but Sathas has brought to light the fact that there was a considerable number of them, and he has already published three, Zeno, Sfathes, and Gyparis, in addition to the Erophile. Some of them are translations, and all of them are closely connected with Italian dramas of the same period. The EropJdle has interludes to each act, dealing with an entirely different theme, and most probably written by a different author. The third poem, The Shepherdess, is a charming idyll written by Nicolaos Demetrios, a native of Apocorone in Crete, who lived in the beginning of the 17th century.

There are few prose productions of any importance belonging to the early period of modern Greek literature. Crusius mentions works written by Malaxos, Zigomalas, and Canavoutzis. Sathas has more recently brought to light a number of chroniclers, such as those in the second volume of his Bibliotheca Grceca Medii sEvi, that relate the history 