Page:The golden days of the early English church from the arrival of Theodore to the death of Bede, volume 1.djvu/23

Rh still remained a great deal that was remarkable as a proof of virility and strength. In the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries it produced several emperors who may claim to stand by earlier Roman rulers as soldiers and as statesmen. If its secular literature had lost the ancient flavour of Greek prose and verse, we must remember that the inroads of Christianity had turned men's thoughts into other channels than those which inspired the earlier poets and historians, and the new men seem to me at times to show proofs of the same subtlety and acuteness in the field of theology that their fathers showed in more profitable fields. We can never forget, again, that it was in those centuries that the codification of Roman law took place under Justinian and Theodosius, a work compiled by some of the ablest practical lawyers of all time, while the new laws passed during the same period were in no wise behind the earlier ones in excellence. Apart from this was the fact that the possession of the Greek tongue at least opened the door to the wealth of fine thought of the classical writers, while the necessity of learning Latin was imposed on a large number of its people by the fact that Latin was the language of the courts and of the codes. It was the lingua franca used in the army, including the words of command, while the inscriptions on the imperial coinage show how long the Western language continued to be the official tongue. This meant that a larger part of the community was bilingual, which in itself was a great educational advantage.