The 4th century may be said to mark the beginning of the last stage in the decay of literary Hellenism. From that point the decline was rapid and nearly continuous. The attitude of the church towards it was no longer that which had been held by Clement of Alexandria, by Justin Martyr or by Origen. There was now a Christian Greek literature, and a Christian Greek eloquence of extraordinary power. The laity became more and more estranged from the Greek literature—however intrinsically pure and noble—of the pagan past. At the same time the Greek language—which had maintained its purity in Italian seats—was becoming corrupted in the new Greek Rome of the East. In A.D. 529 Justinian put forth an edict by which the schools of heathen philosophy were formally closed. The act had at least a symbolical meaning. It is necessary to guard against the supposition that such assumed landmarks in political or literary history always mark a definite transition from one order of things to another. But it is practically convenient, or necessary, to use such landmarks.
Bibliography.—The first attempt at a connected history of Greek literature was the monumental and still indispensable work of J. A. Fabricius (14 vols., 1705-1728; new ed. in 12 vols. by G. C. Harless, 1790-1809); this was followed by F. Schöll’s Hist. de la littérature grecque (1813). Both these works begin with the earliest times and go down to the latest period of the Byzantine empire. Of more modern and recent works the following may be mentioned: G. Bernhardy, Grundriss der griechischen Literatur (1836-1845; 4th ed., 1876-1880; 5th ed. of vol. i., by R. Volkmann, 1892), chiefly confined to the poets; C. O. Müller, History of Greek Literature (unfinished), written for the London Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and published in English in 1840, the translation being by G. Cornewall Lewis and J. W. Donaldson (the latter completed the work to the end of the Byzantine period for the edition of 1858; the German text was published by E. Müller in 1841; 4th ed. by E. Heitz, 1882-1884); W. Mure, Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece (1850-1857); T. Bergk, Griechische Literaturgeschichte (1872-1894, vols. 2, 3, ed. G. Hinrichs, vol. 4 by R. Peppmüller) containing epos, lyric, drama down to Euripides, and the beginnings of prose; R. Nicolai, Griechische Literaturgeschichte (2nd ed., 1873-1878), useful for bibliography, but in other respects unsatisfactory; J. P. Mahaffy, Hist. of Classical Greek Literature (4th ed., 1903); A. and M. Croiset, Hist. de la littérature grecque (1887-1899, 2nd ed. 1896); W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur bis auf die Zeit Justinians (4th ed., 1905; 5th ed., pt. i., by O. Stählin and W. Schmid, 1908), by far the most serviceable handbook for the student. F. Susemihl’s Geschichte der griechischen Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit (1891-1892) is especially valuable for its notes. Of smaller manuals the following will be found most useful: G. G. Murray, History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897); F. B. Jevons, History of Greek Literature (3rd ed., 1900) down to the time of Demosthenes; A. and M. Croiset, Manuel d’hist. de la littérature grecque (1900; Eng. trans., by G. F. Heffelbower, N.Y., 1904); also the general sketches by U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff in Die Kultur der Gegenwart, i. 8 (1905), by A. Gercke in the Sammlung Göschen (Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1905), and by R. C. Jebb in Companion to Greek Studies (Cambridge, 1905). Other works generally connected with the subject are: E. Hübner, Bibliographie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (2nd ed., 1889), pp. 161-17l; W. Engelmann, Bibliotheca scriptorum classicorum (8th ed., by E. Preuss, 1880); J. B. Mayor, Guide to the Choice of Classical Books (1896), p. 86; W. Kroll, Die Altertumswissenschaft im letzten Vierteljahrhundert 1875-1900 (1905), p. 465 foll.; J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (1906-1908); “Bibliotheca philologica classica,” in C. Bursian’s Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft; articles in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (1894—).
(R. C. J.; X.)
II. Byzantine Literature
By “Byzantine literature” is generally meant the literature, written in Greek, of the so-called Byzantine period. There is no justification whatever for the inclusion of Latin works of the time of the East Roman empire. The close of Definition. the Byzantine period is clearly marked by the year 1453, at which date, with the fall of the Eastern empire, the peculiar culture and literary life of the Byzantines came to an end. It is only as regards the beginning of the Byzantine period that any doubts exist. There are no sufficient grounds for dating it from Justinian, as was formerly often done. In surveying the whole development of the political, ecclesiastical and literary life and of the general culture of the Roman empire, and particularly of its eastern portion, we arrive, on the contrary, at the conclusion that the actual date of the beginning of this new era—i.e. the Christian-Byzantine, in contradistinction to the Pagan-Greek and Pagan-Roman—falls within the reign of Constantine the Great. By the foundation of the new capital city of Constantinople (which lay amid Greek surroundings) and by the establishment of the Christian faith as the state religion, Constantine finally broke with the Roman-Pagan tradition, and laid the foundation of the Christian-Byzantine period of development. Moreover, in the department of language, so closely allied with that of literature, the 4th century marks a new epoch. About this time occurred the final disappearance of a characteristic of the ancient Greek language, important alike in poetry and in rhythmic prose, the difference of “quantity.” Its place was henceforth taken by the accent, which became a determining principle in poetry, as well as for the rhythmic conclusion of the prose sentence. Thus the transition from the old musical language to a modern conversational idiom was complete.
The reign of Constantine the Great undoubtedly marks the beginning of a new period in the most important spheres of national life, but it is equally certain that in most of them ancient tradition long continued to exercise an Transitional period. influence. Sudden breaches of continuity are less common in the general culture and literary life of the world than in its political or ecclesiastical development. This is true of the transition from pagan antiquity to the Christian middle ages. Many centuries passed before the final victory of the new religious ideas and the new spirit in public and private intellectual and moral life. The last noteworthy remnants of paganism disappeared as late as the 6th and 7th centuries. The last great educational establishment which rested upon pagan foundations—the university of Athens—was not abolished till A.D. 529. The Hellenizing of the seat of empire and of the state, which was essential to the independent development of Byzantine literature, proceeds yet more slowly. The first purely Greek emperor was Tiberius II. (578-582); but the complete Hellenizing of the character of the state had not been accomplished until the 7th century. We shall, therefore, regard the period from the 4th to the 7th century as that of the transition between ancient times and the middle ages. This period coincides with the rise of a new power in the world’s history—Islam. But though, in this transitional period, the old and the new elements are both to a large extent present and are often inextricably interwoven, yet it is certain that the new elements are, both as regards their essential force and their influence upon the succeeding period, of infinitely greater moment than the decrepit and mostly artificial survivals of the antique.
In order to estimate rightly the character of Byzantine literature and its distinctive peculiarities, in contradistinction to ancient Greek, it is imperative to examine the great difference between the civilizations that produced Mixed character of Byzantine culture. them. The Byzantine did not possess the homogeneous, organically constructed system of the ancient civilization, but was the outcome of an amalgamation of which Hellenism formed the basis. For, although the Latin character of the empire was at first completely retained, even after its final division in 395, yet the dominant position of Greek in the Eastern empire gradually led to the Hellenizing of the state. The last great act of the Latin tradition was the codification, in the Latin language, of the law by Justinian (527-565). But it is significant that the Novels of Justinian were composed partly in Greek, as were all the laws of the succeeding period. Of the emperors in the centuries following Justinian, many of course were foreigners, Isaurians, Armenians and others; but in language and education they were all Greeks. In the last five centuries of the empire, under the Comneni and the Palaeologi, court and state are purely Greek.
In spite of the dominant position of Greek in the Eastern empire, a linguistic and national uniformity such as formed the foundation of the old Latin Imperium Romanum never existed there. In the West, with the expansion of Rome’s political supremacy, the Latin language and Latin culture were everywhere introduced—first into the non-Latin provinces of Italy, later into Spain, Gaul and North Africa, and at last even into certain parts of the Eastern empire. This Latinizing was so thorough that it weathered all storms, and, in the countries affected by it, was the parent of new and vigorous nationalities, the French, the Spaniards, the Portuguese and the Rumanians. Only in Africa did “Latinism” fail to take root permanently. From the 6th century that province relapsed into the hands of the native barbarians and of the immigrant Arabs, and both the Latin and the Greek influences (which had grown in strength during the period of the Eastern empire) were, together with Christianity, swept away without leaving a trace behind. It might have been expected that the Hellenizing of the political system of the Eastern empire would have likewise entailed the Hellenizing of the non-Greek portions of the empire. Such, however, was not the case; for all the conditions precedent to such a development were wanting. The non-Greek portions of the Eastern empire were not, from the outset, gradually incorporated into the state from a Greek centre, as were the provinces in the West from a Latin centre. They had been acquired in the old period of the homogeneous Latin Imperium. In the centuries immediately following the division of the empire, the idea of Hellenizing the Eastern provinces could not take root, owing to the fact that Latin was retained, at least in principle, as the state language. During the later centuries, in the non-Greek parts, centrifugal tendencies and the destructive inroads of barbarians began on all sides; and the government was too much occupied with the all but impossible task of preserving the political unity of the empire to entertain seriously the wider aim of an assimilation of language and culture. Moreover, the Greeks did not possess that enormous political energy and force which enabled the Romans to assimilate foreign races; and, finally, they were confronted by sturdy Oriental, mostly Semitic, peoples, who were by no means so easy to subjugate as were the racially related inhabitants of Gaul and Spain. Their impotence against the peoples of the East will be still less hardly judged if we remember the fact already mentioned, that even the Romans were within a short period driven back and overwhelmed by the North African Semites who for centuries had been subjected to an apparently thorough process of Latinization.
The influence of Greek culture then, was very slight; how little indeed it penetrated into the oriental mind is shown by the fact that, after the violent Arab invasion in the south-east corner of the Mediterranean, the Copts and Syrians were able to retain their language and their national characteristics, while Greek culture almost completely disappeared. The one great instance of assimilation of foreign nationalities by the Greeks is the Hellenizing of the Slavs, who from the 6th century had migrated into central Greece and the Peloponnese. All other non-Greek tribes of any importance which came, whether for longer or for shorter periods, within the sphere of the Eastern empire and its civilization—such as the Copts, Syrians, Armenians, Georgians, Rumanians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians—one and all retained their nationality and language. The complete Latinizing of the West has, accordingly, no counterpart in a similar Hellenizing of the East. This is clearly shown during the Byzantine period in the progress of Christianity. Everywhere in the West, even among the non-Romanized Anglo-Saxons, Irish and Germans, Latin maintained its position in the church services and in the other branches of the ecclesiastical system; down to the Reformation the church remained a complete organic unity. In the East, at the earliest period of its conversion to Christianity, several foreign tongues competed with Greek, i.e. Syrian, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Gothic, Old-Bulgarian and others. The sacred books were translated into these languages and the church services were held in them and not in Greek. One noticeable effect of this linguistic division in the church was the formation of various sects and national churches (cf. the Coptic Nestorians, the Syrian Monophysites, the Armenian and, in more recent times, the Slavonic national churches). The Church of the West was characterized by uniformity in language and in constitution. In the Eastern Church parallel to the multiplicity of languages developed also a corresponding variety of doctrine and constitution.
Though the character of Byzantine culture is mainly Greek, and Byzantine literature is attached by countless threads to ancient Greek literature, yet the Roman element forms a very essential part of it. The whole political Roman influence. character of the Byzantine empire is, despite its Greek form and colouring, genuinely Roman. Legislation and administration, the military and naval traditions, are old Roman work, and as such, apart from immaterial alterations, they continued to exist and operate, even when the state in head and limbs had become Greek. It is strange, indeed, how strong was the political conception of the Roman state (Staatsgedanke), and with what tenacity it held its own, even under the most adverse conditions, down to the latter days of the empire. The Greeks even adopted the name “Romans,” which gradually became so closely identified with them as to supersede the name “Hellenes”; and thus a political was gradually converted into an ethnographical and linguistic designation. Rhomaioi was the most common popular term for Greeks during the Turkish period, and remains so still. The old glorious name “Hellene” was used under the empire and even during the middle ages in a contemptuous sense—“Heathen”—and has only in quite modern times, on the formation of the kingdom of “Hellas,” been artificially revived. The vast organization of the Roman political system could not but exercise in various ways a profound influence upon Byzantine civilization; and it often seemed as if Roman political principles had educated and nerved the unpolitical Greek people to great political enterprise. The Roman influence has left distinct traces in the Greek language, Greek of the Byzantine and modern period is rich in Latin terms for conceptions connected with the departments of justice, administration and the imperial court. In literature such “barbarisms” were avoided as far as possible, and were replaced by Greek periphrases.