e most prosperous
aeras of the Byzantine literature. By their munificence the treasures
of antiquity were deposited in the Imperial library; by their pens,
or those of their associates, they were imparted in such extracts
and abridgments as might amuse the curiosity, without oppressing the
indolence, of the public. Besides the Basilics, or code of laws, the
arts of husbandry and war, of feeding or destroying the human species,
were propagated with equal diligence; and the history of Greece and Rome
was digested into fifty-three heads or titles, of which two only (of
embassies, and of virtues and vices) have escaped the injuries of time.
In every station, the reader might contemplate the image of the past
world, apply the lesson or warning of each page, and learn to admire,
perhaps to imitate, the examples of a brighter period. I shall not
expatiate on the works of the Byzantine Greeks, who, by the assiduous
study of the ancients, have deserved, in some measure, the remembrance
and gratitude of the moderns. The scholars of the present age may still
enjoy the benefit of the philosophical commonplace book of Stobaeus, the
grammatical and historical lexicon of Suidas, the Chiliads of Tzetzes,
which comprise six hundred narratives in twelve thousand verses, and the
commentaries on Homer of Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, who,
from his horn of plenty, has poured the names and authorities of four
hundred writers. From these originals, and from the numerous tribe
of scholiasts and critics, [109] some estimate may be formed of the
literary wealth of the twelfth century: Constantinople was enlightened
by the genius of Homer and Demosthenes, of Aristotle and Plato: and
in the enjoyment or neglect of our present riches, we must envy the
generation that could still peruse the history of Theopompus, the
orations of Hyperides, the comedies of Menander, [110] and the odes of
Alcaeus and Sappho. The frequent labor of illustration attests not only
the existence, but the popularity, of the Grecian classics: the general
knowledge of the age may be deduced from the example of two learned
females, the empress Eudocia, and the princess Anna Comnena, who
cultivated, in the purple, the arts of rhetoric and philosophy. [111]
The vulgar dialect of the city was gross and barbarous: a more correct
and elaborate style distinguished the discourse, or at least the
compositions, of the church and palace, which sometimes affected to copy
the puri