come less striking as we advance; the colourings, no longer vivid, are mellowed into the tints of autumn, but although "fallen into the sear and yellow leaf," remain pleasing to the eye, and interesting even to their latest decay.

During the lapse of more than five hundred years, the lyre of Greece hung silent and unstrung; and when Agathias, in the sixth century, attempted to give it sound, a feeble tinkling was returned to the touch before it lay mute for ever.

This collector raked together the loose miscellanies and scattered fragments of his time; and knew not that by his exertions he was bequeathing and perpetuating to succeeding ages the figure of his country, enfeebled, helpless, exhausted, and nearly sunk into dotage. Some of his own productions may be brought forward to redeem it from this second childishness. He himself acknowledges the strong bent of his mind to the alluring pursuit of poetry, and in early youth he published a collection of amorous poems, which he entitled "Daphniaca." In some of his works a tenderness and justness of expression are perceivable, which would have done honour to better times; and the tribute offered to the Ereutho of Agathias, would not have been disregarded by the Heliodora of Meleager. It is most probable that our collector was assisted by

his friend Paul the Silentiary*, who, besides his more desultory works, wrote a laboured account of the Church, dedicated to Santa Sophia, or Sacred Wisdom, from which the cross has been taken, and the monks have in latter days retired, to make way for dervishes and the adorers of Mahomet.

Many of the Epigrams of Agathias and his friend the Silentiary, correspond with each other. Paul was a courtier, who prostituted his muse, it is said, in celebration of the infamous Theodora; he was a voluptuary, who seems to have indulged himself freely in the gardens, the baths, and all the debasing pleasures of his countrymen. He is never cloyed by possession, but returns after enjoyment, and dwells, in his polluted imagination, on the banquet by which he has been surfeited. In this however he is not singular; for dreadful as were the calamities of his times, we turn with still greater horror from the vices which gave birth to them.

We can know little of the private life of Agathias; but from an anecdote which he has himself related, we may conjecture that it was imbittered by family disputes and misfortunes. His sister, Eugenia, had been married to Theodotus. This gentle

* Παῦλος Σιλεντιαριος, a term adopted from the Latin Silentium; more properly Παῦλος Ησυχοποιός: it was an office in the court of Justinian, corresponding to that of Gentleman-usher.

pair, on some difference of opinion, had recourse to a trial of strength, in which, before they could be separated, they both expired*. Agathias supposes the husband to exculpate them, by declaring, from their common tomb, that neither was in fault,—that envy, or some fury, had devoted them to its vengeance, and that before the judge of the shades they stood acquitted of malice.

The labours of Agathias have however deserved well of posterity; for as the public taste declines with the morals and power of a people, he found admirers in his contemporaries, who seem to have given all the encouragement in their power to this unpromising offspring of decrepitude, and to have watched over it with such jealous care, that we have more remains from the collection of Agathias, than from those of his two predecessors conjointly. Thus, if we are not indebted to this collector for any very refined pleasure in the perusal of his work,—yet, if it be true that muta est pictura poesis, we are at least enabled to judge, from the preference given to the new over the old collection, of the then prevailing taste in literature.

A more calamitous period in the history of the

* See Epig. 86 Agath. Brunck. tom. iii. p. 65.

world is not to be found, than that which elapsed from the fourth to the sixth century. The barbarians of the North had not only succeeded in their depredations on the enfeebled inhabitants of the Eastern and Western empires, but had introduced their manners among them, and had even engrafted their jargons on the withering stem of Grecian lite

rature.

At the end of the sixth century, this unhappy country appears to have become foreign to herself, and none, except those who devoted themselves solely to the study of ancient learning, were masters of the dialects, metres, and nice discriminations between words seemingly synonymous. Grammarians had, at different times, endeavoured to affix, by accents, certain rules for the raising and depression of the voice, which, if not invented at this æra, were at least more generally resorted to as the standards of tone and modulation. On props so faithless and unsteady, the ancient fabric was not calculated long to brave the assaults of barbarism. The public taste continued to decline; and while the collection of Agathias remained entire, those of Meleager and Philip were yearly losing some of their ornaments from two distinct causes: for the decay of old manuscripts was not supplied by new transcribers; and

with a gloomy and unrelenting zeal the ministers of religion persecuted every work of ingenuity and fancy.

The first of Meleager's collections was necessarily exposed to their fury. The specimens of that work which yet remain too abundantly justify the persecution. It was written for the express purpose of celebrating Eastern sensuality; and is said to have contained nothing but the divitias miseras of a mind pregnant with ideas wasted in the embellishment of vice. But unfortunately its undiscriminating enemies appear to have been actuated by a rage no less furious, against those beautiful relics of affection and sorrow, by which the poet endeavoured to make amends to an insulted world for the extravagance of his youth.

To Agathias we are indebted for six years of the reign of Justinian, continued from the history of Procopius to the last victory of Belisarius, in the year 559, over the Bulgarians, commanded by Zabergan. The history of our author has been censured, perhaps justly, as a dull and prolix declamation. Yet he is generally allowed to maintain a respectable place among the Byzantine historians, and is peculiarly noticed for the mildness and humanity of his sentiments.

The whole series of the Gothic war had been com