1282. was, if not in mind the most original, at least A.D. in acquirement the most extraordinary man of his age. Of his life but few particulars are known; he was born in Nicomedia, resided at Constantinople, was ambassador from Andronicus to the Venetians, and died about A.D. 1350. Amongst his other peculiarities, I may observe, that he was the first individual who introduced the use of what are termed the Arabic numerals. His learning, which extended to almost every branch, was devoted to the composition of works on a variety of subjects; and poetry and philology, arithmetic and Latin literature, rhetoric and ethics, have been equally illustrated by the pen of Planudes.* It must not, however, be omitted, that he possessed neither the power of creative genius, nor discerning taste, and that strength, rather than elegance, was the characteristic of his mind. During the civil wars, in the reign of the younger Andronicus,† the dynasty of the emperors received the fatal wound, which was • Berington, app. i. p. 628. 81. Harles, sec. v. p. 575. Schoell, 1. vi. c. 72, 74, 79, + Of these an eloquent but insincere account has been furnished us by the principal actor, John Cantacuzenus, written after his abdication, in a convent.-Gibbon, c. lxiii. Schoell, 1. vi. c. 86. Berington, app. i. p. 622. Boeclerus, sec. P. C. xiii. p. 105. Harles, sec. v. p. 577. Fabricius, l. v. 1333. A.D. to terminate in its annihilation; the Turks gained that footing in the dominions of the Greeks, which they never abandoned till the race of its feeble monarchs was no more.* From this period till the utter overthrow of Byzantium, its annals form a picture as melancholy as disgusting; its princes, though their possessions were dwindled to the extent of a worthless province, were still madly pursuing idiotic fallacies, whilst the breasts of their subjects were festering with envenomed controversy; apathy alone seemed to prevent their enemies from seizing at once upon their remnant of a territory, which they appeared to wait for as a prize that was shortly to drop of its own accord into their hands, without requiring even the effort of a grasp. In vain the terrified victims at last awoke to a consciousness of their infatuation, and looked alternately with horror on their expectant foe, and with pitiable entreaty towards the christians of Europe; in vain they sought to bury in oblivion those baneful enmities which they now discovered, * In A. D. 1333, the Turks established themselves at Nice, the metropolis of Bithynia. + Such were the Omphalopsychi, who sought for the divine light in their navel; a controversy which occupied a long portion of the reign of John Palæologus.-Gibbon, c. lxiii. A.D. 1333. when too late, had left them a deserted, unfriended, and solitary prey to the destroyer. They made some imploring efforts to obtain, through an ecclesiastical union, the alliance of Christendom; but their advances were received with coldness abroad, and opposed by fiery fanaticism at home.* The Ottomans regarded the impotent attempt with scorn and derision; and at length, wearied with the humiliating spectacle, they placed their hand upon the worthless throne, and took possession in the AD name of Mahomet. During this gloomy era, we can, of course, look for no written memorials of the expiring literature of Greece: we only know, from the evidence of Philelfo and others, that education was still a primary object with the higher orders of the capital; and the labour of the scholiasts, or the productions of antiquity, serve to show that a taste for classical learning was not yet extinguished in the East. The mournful tale of the final overthrow of the Greeks, and the entrance of the Turks into the seven-hilled city of the Cæsars, is related by three individuals who survived the national ruin: Ducas, Chalcondylas, and Phranza, with whose works Gibbon, c. Ixviii. L 2 1453. A.D. we close the tedious series of the Byzantine 1453. historians.* In the Island of Lesbos, which remained The Collection known under this title commences after Procopius, and includes the works of upwards of fifty authors, from Justinian to Mahomet II. The first edition, superintended by Philippe Labbe, a Jesuit, was undertaken by command of Louis XIV. but from the difficulty of bringing together materials, a large proportion of which was still in manuscript, the series is deficient in chronological arrangement; and owing to the varied taste of the numerous editors, there is a want of uniformity, and frequently of perspicuity, in the several works. The Byzantine historians are usually divided into four classes, the first, containing Zonaras, Nicetas, Choniates, Nicephorus Gregoras, and Chalcondylas, whose united volumes form one continuous history of Byzantium. In the second are arranged the compilers of chronicles from the earlier ages to the era of the authors, such as Syncellus, Theophanes the Isaurian, Malala, Scylitza, and others. The third comprises those whose labours refer only to a single period, the reign of an emperor or life of an individual, and these, as they frequently treat of their own contemporaries, are usually the most valuable and interesting; such are Agathias, Symocatta, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Anna Comnena, &c. The fourth class includes writers on antiquities and statistics, as Paulus Silentiarius, to whose metrical description of the Cathedral of St. Sophia I have already alluded; Hierocles the Grammarian, who, in a sort of traveller's guidebook, gives an account of sixty-four provinces of the empire; the Themes of Constantine VII. &c. Exclusively of these, there are a few not included amongst the Byzantine writers, Xiphilinus, Pœanius, and Dares the Phrygian, besides a host of authors on the ecclesiastical annals of Byzantium. 1462. in the family of Gasteluzzi, till wrested from A.D. them by Mahomet II., Ducas, a descendant of the imperial family, composed, after the fall of the city, his history, which, though it runs back so far as the earliest ages, is copious and detailed only from the year 1341, when John Cantacuzene was declared guardian to young Lascaris, till the reduction of Lesbos, in A.D. 1462. The style is barbarous, but its details evince shrewd reflection and political sagacity.* Chalcondylas, who wrote about the same time, was credulous as a chronicler, but rich in a profusion of valuable facts;† and Phranza, who concludes the list, can boast neither the interest of the one nor the talents of the other. On the conquest of Constantinople, he was sold into slavery, but, being subsequently redeemed, he withdrew to the Court of Thomas, the gallant despot of the Morea, and on his defeat, retired to a Corfiot monastery, where, under the name of Gregorius, he compiled his annals of the Palæologi, from their restoration in A.D. 1261, to their final dispersion in a. D. 1453. The objections to this production are those which are common to almost the entire suite of his fellowwriters-an ungraceful and affected style, a fri Harles, sec. v. p. 585. + Schoell, 1. vi. c. 84. sec. v. p. 585. Schoell, 1. vi. c. 86. Fabricius, l. v. c. i. 14. Harles, |