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The Hellenistic Origins of Byzantine Literature Author(S): Romilly J The Hellenistic Origins of Byzantine Literature Author(s): Romilly J. H. Jenkins Source: Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 17 (1963), pp. 37+39-52 Published by: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1291189 . Accessed: 29/09/2013 21:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Dumbarton Oaks Papers. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 96.242.69.165 on Sun, 29 Sep 2013 21:24:22 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE HELLENISTIC ORIGINS OF BYZANTINE LITERATURE ROMILLY J. H. JENKINS This content downloaded from 96.242.69.165 on Sun, 29 Sep 2013 21:24:22 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions E can make no attempt to survey Byzantine literature as a whole, not merely because of the sheer magnitude of the task, but also because much of it, and much of the best of it, does not derive from a Hellenistic source. The best poetry of Byzantium, which is found in her rhythmical hymnology, is an instance of this.' The great Krumbacher has warned us against the fallacy of regarding Byzantine literature as a mere offshoot of classical antiquity.2 It was an independent entity, created out of a fusion of Greek, Roman, oriental and native Byzantine elements, and perme- ated by an Orthodox Christianity which included not only the areas of dogmatic belief and everyday conduct, but also those of political theory and practice. It is certainly a question whether Lucian would have found himself any more at home in Byzantium of the tenth century A.D. than in Athens of the fifth century B.C. Nevertheless, several of the most important strands in the Byzan- tine literary fabric were of specifically Hellenistic origin, and remained unaltered until the last days of the Empire. Among these were, scholarly versification, rhetoric, literary encyclopedism, and, most of all, historiography. It is not possible to consider any literature without also considering the people for whom it was written. The Hellenistic culture, especially after the final establishment of the Roman Empire, included a large body of educated and leisured men, who lived in a multitude of cities and who, if they could not continue, could at least appreciate the literary traditions of the past. It was for such men as these that Plutarch wrote his moral essays, and Lucian his satires. The very fact that such authors could be read simultaneously on the banks of the Thames and the Orontes contributed to the tone of easy urbanity and good breeding in which they wrote. Even up to the sixth century A.D. rhetoricians, theologians, and historians could still count on a widely educated and widely extended audience. After the cataclysms of the seventh and eighth centuries, the curtain rises on a wholly different scene. The most cultivated provinces of the Hellenistic East are under the Saracen heel. The old homeland of the Hellenes, from Chalcidice to Cape Taenarum, is so com- pletely Slavized that it is recognized everywhere as Sclavinica terra. Byzantine Italy is under threat from Lombard, Frank, and Saracen. And the lands west of Italy are nearly as remote as the moon. At home the external and internal struggles of the Empire, under the gloomy enthusiasts of the Isaurian dynasty, have left little room for the cultivation of polite letters, and have even de- stroyed much upon which such cultivation might be based.3 A revival of profane letters did, as we know, come in the ninth century, and thereafter no such 1 Even these "Hebrew Melodies" can scarcely be called "poetry" in the western sense of the term: they have no trace of lyrical inspiration, and seldom rise above the level of impressive declamation. See N. B. v Tomadakis, Eioaycryico~ nis pv•Eav-rtviv hoyomXvifav (Athens, 1952), pp. 122-3, 207-17. 2 K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byz. Litteratur2 (Munich, 1897), pp. 21-2; the whole introductory essay, ibid., pp. 1-36, remains of permanent value. 3 Cf. ibid., pp. 12-13. 39 This content downloaded from 96.242.69.165 on Sun, 29 Sep 2013 21:24:22 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 40 ROMILLY J. H. JENKINS disastrous setback was again experienced until 1204. But it was a revival with a difference. In and after the ninth century it is nearly true to say that if a secular writer were not read in Constantinople, he was not read anywhere. This is a fact of prime importance for explaining the most characteristic of the literary genres practiced at Byzantium. Polite letters assume an esoteric air. No secular literature was written for a wide public, since no such public existed. Instead of the epic or the idyll, the drama or the romantic tale, we find the epigram, the ornate epistle, the feoorrowdaor the laborious ecphrasis,4 that is to say, species of composition which could be appreciated only by a small circle of highly instructed scholars. This surely explains the tendency of later Byzantine writers to become ever more affected and euphuistic, in pro- portion as their audience contracted and demanded ever more elaborate dis- plays of stylistic ingenuity. Moreover, the whole spirit of literature, as an art liberally and spontane- ously practiced, had changed beneath the perennial strain of the fight for bare survival. The climate of culture was austere and puritanical. The union of the pagan and Christian cultures was marked by St. Basil's celebrated Advice to young Christians on what use to make of the classics;5 but this tract, while emphasizing the importance of an "undercoat" (as it were) of pagan educa- tion, yet added significantly: "Whatever can help us to attain to the other life, that we must love and pursue with all our might; and whatever cannot achieve this purpose, that we must reject." The duty of man was to do God's will and get to heaven. Urbanity and wit, poetry and fancy, could be of no service in these operations. There were witty and amusing men in all ages at Byzantium; but we should never guess it from what they have left us. Only now and again, from some scholion or some account of a foreign observer, does a shaft of gaiety penetrate the gloomy pall of Pharisaism. Satire, indeed, on the Hellenistic model, was to some extent revived in later centuries; but it is satire that has lost all urbanity and charm, and tends to become an instru- ment of rancorous polemic. Even the Prodromic poems, which satirize, with some humor though certainly not with good-humor, monastic life under the Comneni, do not rise above a tone of servility and monotonous grumbling. It is melancholy to read the record of Michael Psellus6 that his mother, to whom he was fondly attached, would never kiss her children except when she thought them asleep, and unable to witness this very human weakness. It was not to be expected that in such a climate secular poetry could flourish. Many of the best writers and scholars in all ages, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, George of Pisidia, the Deacon Theodosius, Christopher of Mitylene or John Mavropous, have left us reams of iambic verses on theological or historical subjects; but we can scarcely recall a single line of poetry. And, what is surely more remarkable, this truth holds good even of those more popular compo- sitions in which the stressed "political" line has liberated the composer from 4 See Aphthonius, Progymnasmata, ed. by Rabe (Teubner, 1926), pp. 36-41- 6 MPG, XXXI, cols. 564-89. 6 Ed, K. N. Sathas, MC1COavtmK Bi3X7io"0Kr), V (Paris, 1876), p. 17. This content downloaded from 96.242.69.165 on Sun, 29 Sep 2013 21:24:22 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HELLENISTIC ORIGENS OF BYZANTINE LITERATURE 41 the restrictions of classical prosody: I mean, in such works as the lays of Digenes or the Chronicle of the Morea or the tedious verse romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.' The content is often interesting, but interesting to the historian only. We can best illustrate these truths by a glance at one who was, by the united testimony of Byzantine and modern critics, the greatest of Byzantine poets, and who became the model of verse composi- tion to succeeding ages: I refer to George of Pisidia. George,s who is sometimes, but very erroneously, called the last of the ancient Greek poets, was the contemporary and panegyrist of the Emperor Heraclius. He was a voluminous versifier, but his most celebrated composi- tions were his accounts of Heraclius' campaigns against the Persians and Avars. These poems took the form of encomiastic epic, a kind of composition deriving from, and very popular in, the Hellenistic Age, when the exploits and victories of many Seleucid or Pergamene sovereigns were lauded in this manner. In a later epoch, Claudian and Corippus wrote similar poems in Latin. George's verses are iambic trimeters, instead of the hexameters tradition- ally associated with epic. His model was the rhesis of Euripides, and he was a good scholar; so good, indeed, that in the eleventh century the question was seriously discussed as to which of the two, Euripides or George, wrote the better verses.9 The very fact that the question could have been put at all is striking testimony to the total lack of poetic feeling and appreciation at Byzant- ium during the most cultured epoch of her renaissance.
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