ONSTANTINE, the first Christian emperor, removed the capital of the world-empire from Rome to Byzantium, henceforth to be called Constantinople. Though the court, with all its splendor and power, was thus transferred to a city where Greek was the vernacular, the change did not retard, it rather hastened, the decline of literature. The old Pagan mythology had been so closely interwoven with all Greek culture, and the mutual hostility of the two religions which had for over two centuries been struggling for mastery was so intense, that Christianity could triumph only by trampling on the noblest works of the Greek genius. Plato, in his "Republic," had condemned even Homer for immorality in his stories of the gods; still more must Christian teachers, so long as those gods were accepted as popular objects of worship, oppose the literature which gave them glory. The first preachers of the Gospel were chiefly rude and unlettered men, and appealed to the toiling multitude rather than to the learned. When Christianity, in spite of the opposition of the wise and noble, became dominant, these unlearned men were raised to places of honor, and used their influence to banish the venerable poets and sages from the schools and the minds of men. Meantime rude soldiers and politicians, utterly careless of religion, but ambitious of

power, were easily brought to profess the creed of the sovereign. The gods of Olympus had already become objects of contempt to philosophers; they were now rejected by the mass of the people. The literature, which had been permeated by their praises, entirely lost its attractiveness. Finally the Emperor Justinian prohibited the teaching of philosophy and closed the schools of Athens.

The Greek language, spoken in Constantinople, had lost its Attic purity. The crowds which thronged the streets of the capital were of various races, and their barbarism infected the speech of the court. Oriental superstitions were mingled with the doctrines of Christ as well as with the discourses of the sophists. Heresies sprang up in the Christian Church, and much of its energy was spent in doctrinal controversy. The great library of Alexandria and the schools which had been established in connection with it were closed at the end of the fourth century by the edict of Theodosius. The Emperor Julian received the infamous surname of the Apostate from his endeavor to restore Paganism and Greek philosophy to their former position of honor. The result was still more bitter antagonism between the old faith and the new. A similar renewal of strife occurred at Alexandria, and made Hypatia (in 415 A.D.) a martyr of philosophy.

Much of the literature of the Byzantine period was theological and controversial. This, however, does not belong to the domain of literature proper, any more than the Code of Laws which gives fame to the reign of Justinian. The chief occupation of the sophists in Constantinople was the cultivation of rhetoric, and its highest achievements were fulsome eulogies of princes and generals. In Asia Minor there sprang up a new department of literature, which was probably due to Eastern influence. Iamblichus, said to be a Syrian freedman, had published about 120 A.D. a love story called "Babylonian Adventures." After a considerable interval Heliodorus, who in his old age was a Christian bishop, related the loves of Theagenes and Chariclea in his "Æthiopica," and Longus wrote the more celebrated "Daphnis and Chloe," called also "The Lesbian Tale," which has been the model of many modern romances.

The most voluminous department of the Byzantine period was that of historians of various grades, yet altogether rather plodding annalists and chroniclers than true historians deserving to be separately distinguished. One may be named as being a lady of the imperial family, Anna Comnena (1083-1148). There were in Constantinople, as formerly in Alexandria, many grammarians, who, besides compiling grammars and dictionaries, wrote commentaries on the classics, and thus preserved extracts or fragments from the noblest writings of antiquity.

A few poems belong to this closing period of Greek literature. Nonnus, said to be an Egyptian, wrote in the early part of the fifth century an epic on the conquest of India by Bacchus. It is a rehearsal of all the stories of this favorite deity in the old mythology. Much more interesting is the narrative poem of "Hero and Leander," which is attributed to Musæus, a poet of the fourth or fifth century, but bearing a name associated with the very beginning of Greek literature. This graceful pathetic poem has in the original but three hundred and forty lines. It has been expanded in the English translation by the two Elizabethan poets, Marlowe and Chapman.

THE exact origin of Greek romance is obscure. General consent ascribes it to the East, although there is a mingling of European ideas with Eastern imaginativeness, resulting in the romances as they are presented to us. The writers of this new development of Greek literature belonged to Asia Minor and its vicinity. Clearchus is credited to Cilicia, Iamblichus and Heliodorus to Syria, and Achilles Tatius to Alexandria. Among the sophists and later Greek writers there was a prevailing tendency to ascribe their own compositions to famous writers of the remote past. Speeches were invented for Xenophon, orations for Demosthenes or Solon, and debates were invented as having been held between Alexander the Great and his generals. Stories of former periods, far removed from the actual life of the time, began to be embellished and to merge into the fantastic and impossible. Finally Greek intelligence found an outlet in fanciful love-scenes, intrigues, adventures and incidents. But the delineation of character and manners is an outgrowth of later times, and was never, except incidentally, attempted or attained by the Greek romance writers. There is no necessity for the portrayal of human character till after the reader has begun to look with equanimity upon assaults of robbers, pirates and wild beasts, knowing well that there is a loophole of escape a little way ahead.

One of the earliest writers of the so-called Greek romances was Antonius Diogenes, whose work entitled, "The Wonders beyond Thule," was epitomized by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, in the ninth century. Next in order comes Iamblichus, whose work, "Babylonica," in sixteen books, was written in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The exact place of Xenophon of Ephesus in the list is not well ascertained. He

is the author of the story of Antheia and Habrocomas. Very similar is the tale of Apollonius of Tyre.

By far the most important of the romances ascribed to this period, is the "Ethiopica" of Heliodorus, bishop of Tricca in Thessaly. The burden of the story is that "the course of true love never did run smooth." The hero is Theagenes, a Thessalian of noble birth, and the heroine Chariclea is a priestess of Diana at Delphi, who fall in love at first sight, and in due time elope together. They pass into the hands of pirates and robber chiefs, whom Chariclea's beauty always inspires with a desperate love. No sooner are they delivered from one danger than they fall into another. At last they are carried captive by a band of Ethiopians, and are about to be sacrificed, one to the sun and the other to the moon, when a mark on Chariclea's arm reveals her as the princess of the country to which they have been carried, and all ends happily in her marriage to Theagenes. Heliodorus excels in descriptive power. His descriptions of the bull-fight, the wrestling match, the Delphic procession, and the haunts of the pirates, are especially celebrated.

Next to Heliodorus in point of time comes Achilles Tatius of Alexandria, the author of "Leucippe and Cleitophon." But far more celebrated is the pastoral love story of Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, a charmingly told, yet artificial tale, the scene of which is laid near Mitylene in the island of Lesbos. It is evidently the source of the pastoral romance which spread from Italy over Western Europe.

THE SACRIFICE AT DELPHI.

IN the "Ethiopica" of Heliodorus, otherwise known as the romance of "Theagenes and Chariclea" Calasiris, a priest, tells how the lovers first met at a sacrifice in honor of Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus), the son of Achilles. This sacrifice was offered at Delphi by an embassy of Enianians every fourth year at the time of the Pythian games. Neoptolemus was said to have been slain by Orestes, the son of Agamemnon at the altar of Apollo at Delphi. The leader of the embassy on this occasion claimed descent from Achilles.

The young leader of the embassy entered with an air and aspect truly worthy of Achilles. His neck straight and erect,