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. 66 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. 1057. sovereigns for whom contempt has scarcely a AD. fitting epithet, and during whose reigns "the Greeks, degraded below the common line of servitude, were transferred, like a herd of cattle, by the choice or caprice of two impotent females."* The empire, in the mean time, was hasting rapidly to decay, its provinces invaded by foreign enemies, and its domestic tranquillity destroyed by perpetual commotions, conspiracies, and seditions, as the factions of the populace or the palace alternately decided the successions of the throne.+ 1057. The reign of Isaac Comnenus, though A.D. friendly to literature and science, was too brief to be productive of any important results to his country; but on his retirement from the cares of royalty, his patriotism impelled him, in selecting his successor, to nominate not a prince of his own blood, but one from whose tried abilities he was led to anticipate advantages to the empire. The object of his choice 1059. was Constantine Ducas, who, though destitute of learning himself, was so devotedly its admirer, as to declare, that, in his eyes, the crown of eloquence was superior to that of empire. Zoe and Theodora, daughters of Constantine IX.Gibbon. + Mosheim, Cent. XI. p. 1. c. 2. ↑ Zonaras, Annal. 1. iii. A.D. 1059. A.D. The declaration was, perhaps, insincere; but its avowal served to prove that, by whatsoever motives he may have been actuated, or how far soever he may have sacrificed his imperial duties to unimportant pursuits,† he was still prepared to patronise and reward the cultivation of letters. 1067. Whatever frivolities may have been attached to the character of Ducas, descended unimA.D. paired to his son and successor Michael VII. This weak and contemptible monarch, whose vices and failings were fostered rather than subdued by his intercourse with his tutor, the celebrated Psellus the younger, has left behind him merely the reputation of pedantry unredeemed by talent, and seems to have been destined by nature for the cloister, to which he finally retired. Whilst the armies of the triumphing Turks were invading the provinces of his empire, Michael, devoted solely to the search after knowledge, sat with his sage preceptor engaged in polishing puerile and senseless verses, balancing points of grammatical Zonaras, Annal. l. iii. "In the labour of puerile declamations he sought, without obtaining, the crown of eloquence, more precious in his opinion than that of Rome; and in the subordinate functions of a judge, he forgot the duties of a sovereign and a warrior." -Gibbon, c. xlviii. 1067. expression, or practising the art of rhetorical de- A.D. clamation. But these were not the individuals under whom learning was to flourish, or genius to revive; nor was it such protection which the exigencies of the age demanded. 1081. The Comnenian family returned to the throne A.D. in A. D. 1081, on the investiture of Alexius Comnenus, the nephew of Isaac, with the purple. Though a patron of letters, and possessed of a mind cultivated in the highest degree, his reign rolled past without any grand or general amelioration in the intellectual condition of his people; and the members of his own family are almost the only individuals whose productions have graced the literary history of his age. This, however, is readily accounted for, by the frightful crisis in which he found the affairs of his dominions. In the East, the victorious Turks had spread from Persia to the Hellespont the reign of the Koran and the Crescent; and in the West, the banner of the Cross was displayed by the Latins; "Europe was precipitated upon Asia," and Constantinople was beset by myriads of illiterate and semibarbarous schismatics, from whom civilization had every thing to dread and nought to hope for. Thus, engrossed by foreign conquest and domestic policy, the minor interests of the state |