Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/20

 2 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. friend Libanius, derived suggestions from the religion they despised. In these obviously transitional centu- ries, both pagan and Christian men arose who were not quite antique.^ Some of them eclectically refashioned pagan ethics, some made useful if vapid compendiums of antique culture, some turned epics into grammars ; others unconsciously remoulded primitive Christianity or produced strange creations, compounds of Chris- tianity and paganism. Together they form the link between the earlier pagan and Christian types and the more mediaeval men of the sixth and seventh centuries. The modification of antique pagan and Christian types is one side of the change. Another is repre- sented by the barbarian races who, often with destruc- tive violence, were pressing into the Empire and coming under the influence of whatever existed there. They were affected by intercourse with Italians and provincials, and soon began to absorb knowledge. As their intelligence increased, through their contact with a higher civilization, they drew from the antique according to their understandings and appreciations. The old matters thus absorbed into new natures were transformed, and sometimes gained fresh life. But these barbarian men were not metamorphosed into an- tique persons, nor even into those pagan or Christian semi-antique types which made the Graeco-Eoman world of the fourth and fifth centuries. From the 1 The word *' classical " refers to the characteristics of Greek art and Greek or Roman literature at their best; "antique" refers more generally to the characteristics of Greek and Roman civiliza- tion, without special reference to period or quality; "pagan" means the same, but with the added idea of opposition to Christian thought.