A.D. 911. The works of the Emperor himself, though remarkable when considered in connection with the age in which he lived, and the circumstances under which he wrote, evince but little of either taste or judgment. His life of his grandfather, Basil the Macedonian, is pompous and oratorical,* and the reputation of his numerous other productions is equally mean. The reader will find an equitable estimate of his merits, in the criticisms of Gibbon,† on his Treatise on Government, his detail of the frivolous and contemptible ceremonies of the Byzantine court, and his statistical account of the imperial Themes. The works on medicine, agriculture, and tactics, composed under his in hommes lettrés les fonctionnaires et les prélats. Il aimoit les arts, et surtout l'architecture et la sculpture : il se connoissoit en musique," &c. &c. Schoell, v. vi. p. 19. Genesius, by the request of Constantine, prepared, as an introduction to the biography of Basil, an historical account of the empire during the reign of the four preceding princes, from A.D. 813; and a continuation was added by an anonymous writer, containing the lives of Leo the Philosopher, Alexander, his brother, Constantine himself, and his son, Romanus II. that is, from A. D. 886 to 963. Berington, app. i. p. 565. Schoell, 1. vi. c. lxxxvi.-Harles, sec. v. p. 550. Fabricius, 1. v. c. 5. xvii. + Gibbon, c. liii. The authorship of these works is doubtfully attributed to Constantine Porphyrogenitus. 911. spection, are equally feeble and valueless; and A.D. his revision of the Basilics has been characterised as a mere "partial and mutilated version in the Greek language, of the laws of Justinian." The merits of Constantine are to be grounded, however, less on his acts than his intentions; since even those measures which he adopted as conducive to the advancement of learning, proved in numerous instances highly prejudicial to its interests. Such was his classified compilation* of extracts in imitation of the Myriobiblon of Photius: it consisted of fifty-three books, each comprehending excerpts on a particular subject connected with history, morals, and legislation, geography, agriculture, and science: works of general utility alone were admitted, and those of imagination or invention were carefully excluded. Of this grand work, two chapters alone, the twenty-seventh and fiftieth, remain: the one comprising notices of the embassies which the Romans dispatched or received; and the other, on virtue and vice, consists of quotations and fragments from the sophists and historians of the early ages. The effects of this undertaking, it has been observed, were calculated, in that barbarous era, to * Kepadaιwins úπobeσis, so called by its editor, Theodosius. 911. A.D. engender a disregard for the originals, whilst the extracts were so well suited to the indolent and illiterate taste of the age; and whilst the nation rested content with the superficial gleanings of Constantine, the richer sources of information were unvalued, neglected, and lost.* The time, in fact, was passed when learning could charm, or genius rouse, the ambition of the Greeks; politically and intellectually, they were sunk almost beyond redemption, and their unresisting submission to the absolute despotism of their princes† was heightened by a depressing consciousness of the debasement in which they were plunged, and from which they despaired of again receding. Like the reckless criminal, who would check the occasional bitings of remorse by destroying every memorial of former innocence, they sought, by abandoning the name of Greeks, which they felt they had dishonoured, to stifle their regrets, and hide their degradation by assuming that of Romans. But even this title, likewise, had become contemptible in the eyes of the world: and in the same century of which I speak, the petulant • Mosheim, Cent. X. p. i. c. ii. The legislative and executive power were centred in the person of the monarch, and the last remains of the authority of the senate were finally eradicated by Leo the Philosopher.-Gibbon. 968. ambassador of a German prince dared to tell A.D. the Emperor of the East,* that the deepest insult which the nations of Western Europe could inflict upon their enemies, was to call them Romans: a name expressive of all that was base, avaricious, dastardly, false, and ignoble.† Nicephoras Phocas. + “Quod nos Longobardi, scilicet Saxones, Franci, Lotharingi, Bavarii, Suevi, Burgundiones, tanto dedignamur, ut inimicos nostros commoti, nihil aliúd contumeliarum nisi Romane dicamus: hoc solo, id est Romanorum nomine, quicquid ignobilitatis, quicquid timiditatis, quicquid avaritiæ, quicquid luxuriæ, quicquid mendacii, omne quicquid vitiorum est comprehendente." Luitprand. in Leg. ad. Ni. Phocam. "In the lowest period of degeneracy and decay," says Gibbon," the name of Romans adhered to the last fragments of the empire of Constantinople;" and to the present, the countries of Thrace, and the northern provinces of Greece, retain in the name of Roumelia the title conferred on them by the Byzantine Emperors. "La Romanie s'appelloit anciennement Thrace, mais Constantin transferant le siège de l'Empire à Constantinople, qu'il nomma Rome la Neuve, voulut aussi que le païs d'alentour s'appellast Romaine. Depuis les Turcs ayant commencé leurs conquestes en Europe, par cette Province se sont presque servis du mesme nom, et l'ont appellée Romeli mais sans se restraindre aux limites de la Romaine, ils ont appellé Romeli la pluspart de ce qu'ils ont conquis dans l'Europe de sorte qu'aujourd'huy ils comprennent sous ce nom toutes les terres qui sont sujettes au Beglerbey de la Grèce, dont j'ay parlé cy-dessus." Beauveau, Voyage de Levant, p. 81. Paris, 1619. De La Guilletiere, Lacedemone Anc. et Nou. vol. i. p. 69. A.D. 968. The successors of Constantine inherited neither the taste, the gentle dispositions, nor the literary ambition of their predecessor. The reign of Phocas was productive of no works of even ordinary talent; and Basilius II. whose A.D. life extended into the succeeding century, so far from promoting the cause of learning, declared it "a useless and profitless pursuit;"* and sought merely to perpetuate that night and ignorance into which, since the accession of Romanus II. the nation had gradually relapsed.† 1028. A.D. 1028. The death of Constantine IX. the imperial colleague of Basilius, in the twenty-eighth year of the eleventh century, concluded a reign which has been well denominated the longest and most ignoble in the Byzantine history. His successors, down to the deposition of Michael Stratioticus, and the commencement 1057. of the Comnenian dynasty, were a line of A.D. ⚫ Zonaras, Annal. l. iii. † Amongst the writers of this century, I should have mentioned Simeon the Metaphrast, who composed, at the desire of Constantine, a history of the lives of the saints, distinguished by much eloquence and a highly polished diction, but replete with fable and improbable traditions.— Gibbon, c. liii. Schoell, 1. vi. c. lxxxv. Berington, app. i. p. 568. Suidas, too, the Lexicographer, of whose life or history little or nothing is known, has sometimes been placed in the tenth century. ↑ A.D. 1057. |