717.

A.D. the president of the college and his twelve assistants. It was in vain that Leo, by entreaty and by threats, endeavoured to secure their cooperation in his plans of reformation; and at length, wearied with the profitless attempt, he ordered the Octagon to be surrounded with dried piles, and consumed in the flames the refractory professors together with their literary treasure.* The names of two individuals alone in this gloomy century have descended to posterity with any thing like distinction: George Syncellus, whose Chronicle from the creation of the world to the reign of Diocletian, is valuable for its arrangement, but evinces neither originality nor elegance ; and John of Damascus, a theologian and philosopher, whose early erudition may in a great degree be attributed to his residence among the Saracens, who were then masters of the city of his birth, and were eagerly employed in transfusing into their own language the neglected learning of the Greeks.§

This charge against the Emperor has given rise to much. discussion as to its authenticity; see Schoell, 1. vi. c. lxxix. n. Berington, app. i. p. 545. Gibbon, c. liii. n.

+ Died about A. D. 800.

Fabricius, 1. v. c. iv. 38. Schoell, 1. vi. c. lxxxv. Berington, app. i. p. 549. Harles, sec. v. p. 538.

§ Greek literature was in another direction a sufferer from the literary propensities of the Arabs, as during this period

754.

John was violently opposed to the proceed- AD. ings of the Ikonoclasts, and having condemned them in his writings, was denounced by Leo to the Kalif Abd'ul Melik I. in consequence of which he was forced to retire into Palestine, where he terminated his literary career about A. D. 754. His productions evince a shrewd and accurate judgment, and his style and mode of reasoning render him a phenomenon of learning, when compared with the theologians of the West.*

It is during the ninth century, and especially towards the close, that we begin to perceive the first symptoms of an incipient revival in the literature of the Greeks,† which may in some degree be attributed to a spirit of rivalry excited by the advancing intelligence of the Arabs. During the reign of the emperor Theophilus, 829. a Grecian soldier, who had been captured by the Kalif Al Mamoun, astonished the sages of Bagdad by the profundity of his astronomical and astrological knowledge; but their surprise

many of the works of the ancient Greeks were carried for translation into Arabia, and never returned; their contents alone surviving in the versions of Arabs.

Schoell, 1. vi. c. xciv. Harles, sec. v. p. 541, chap. iv.

p. 714.

+ Gibbon, c. liii. Mill's Theo. Ducas, vol. i. p. 21. Mo-. sheim, Cent. IX. p. i. c. 2.

A.D.

A.D. was unbounded when he informed them, that

829.

66

he was merely the pupil of a master who dwelt in obscurity and penury at Byzantium. This philosopher was Leo, of Constantinople, who supported himself by instructing a few scholars in a hovel at the capital. He was forthwith invited by the kalif to visit Bagdad, but not daring to depart without the permission of the emperor, Al Mamoun applied to Theophilus to obtain his consent. Deploring," he said, "the position in which it had pleased providence to place him, which deprived him of the power of visiting the dominions of the emperor; as a friend, rather, he would say, as a pupil, he besought him to grant him an opportunity of conversing, were it but for a few days, with the prodigy of philosophy who then graced his dominions; and trusted, that a difference of religion would be no obstacle to granting a favour, to which he hoped his rank would sufficiently entitle him. You will not," continued the kalif, "in conferring on me this honour, diminish in any degree your own; for learning, like the beams of the sun, can be infinitely distributed without being diminished. But I will, nevertheless, repay you for the concession, and promise you in return two thousand pounds of gold, and what is more estimable still, peace and an eternal alliance."

829.

To this singular request, Theophilus returned A.D. a rude refusal, adding, "That the sciences, which had conferred a lustre on the Roman name, were not to be imparted to barbarians."*

His pride, however, was aroused, on contrasting his own degraded taste with that of the lordly Arab; and the humble pedagogue, whose fame spread so far, was drawn from his seclusion, and placed at the head of a seminary which the emperor established in the palace of Magnaura. He was subsequently promoted to the archbishopric of Thessalonica; but forced, on the condemnation of the ikonoclastic controversy, in a. D. 849, to return to his former professorship at Constantinople. Of the productions of Leo, nothing now remains to attest the justice of the high reputation he enjoyed; but perhaps the surest test of his merit was his being chosen by Bardas, the uncle of Michael III. to assist him in his efforts for the revival of letters during the reign of his nephew.

A.D.

Devoted solely to the pursuit of pleasure, 829. this flagitious prince abandoned to his relative all the cares of government; and Bardas, though of mean acquirements himself, had learned to

Schoell, 1. vi. c. xci. Berington, app. i. p. 553.

+ Gibbon, c. liii. attributes the opening of this seminary to Bardas. We have to regret that his sketch of the lite rary history of the Greeks is so brief and imperfect.

842.

A.D. appreciate them in others. Aware of the ignorance in which the measures of former sovereigns, and in particular Michael the Stammerer, had plunged the mass of the nation; and stung with envy by the lustre of science then dawning round the throne of the Kalifs, his earliest efforts were strenuously devoted to the esta blishment of seminaries of education, and the revival of learning. In this generous effort his earliest assistants were Leo, and his contemporary John Lecanomante, a man of deep erudition and extensive power, who had been raised by Theophilus to the patriarchal chair, in A.D. 832.*

A.D.

But a more energetic, though, perhaps, not equally successful agent, was the renowned Photius, who occupies so prominent a position in the ecclesiastical affairs of the ninth century.† After enjoying some of the most important offices of the state, this distinguished layman 858. was nominated by Bardas, in A. D. 858, patriarch of Constantinople; and after a stormy and turbulent life, he died in obscurity, in a monastery in Armenia, whither he had been banished by Leo the Philosopher, son to the Emperor Basil. The character of Photius has been assailed with all the venom of priestly hatred; but notwithstanding their bitterest revilings, Schoell, vol. vii. p. 299, n.