very late date. It is, no doubt, indebted for its preservation to the misconception, for which, slight as is its literary worth, we may well be thankful. The pamphlet literature of the Byzantine Empire, of which Procopius's 'Secret History' may be regarded as the archetype, is humanly interesting as a proof that that Empire was actually alive. Lucretius tells us that armies of horse and foot, flashing in armour, though in violent agitation as they exercise a mimic war, appear at a distance like motionless sheets of light :

Et tamen est quidam locus altis montibus unde
Stare videntur et in campis consistere fulgor.

Conversely, the great formal Byzantine Empire, with its stiff creeds and official hierarchies, devoid of a new invention or a new idea, without a single painter of manners or a man of genius, other than of a practical order, appears an inert mass of anything rather than light, and it is only such a casual contact as this that reveals how picturesque and bustling was the inner life of the apparently inanimate community.

From this point of view, the dialogue is equally interesting to whatever age it may belong, but its significance largely depends upon the identity of the persons satirised in it. The age of Heraclius is assuredly the latest date at which the existence of anything resembling a heathen clique in Constantinople can be admitted; and the difficulty involved even in this admission might be thought serious but for the still greater difficulty of supposing Greek mythology to have formed a serious object for attack to a writer of the tenth century. This might have been conceivable if he had wished to pass his work off as Lucian's, but to have done so would have defeated his own object. On the other hand, the dialogue cannot have been written before the time of Heraclius, for among the author's concluding aspirations is one for the recovery of Egypt, which was never lost until the reign of that Emperor, when the Persians occupied it from 616 to 628. The term employed to denote the expected reconquest― enslavement 'does indeed create a difficulty, but not so great as that of imagining that the recovery of a possession lost for three hundred years should have been anticipated in the tenth century, We are also bound to give a generally intelligent author credit for knowing his own meaning, and to assume that when he speaks of Persian superciliousness,' he intends the superciliousness of Persians, and not that of Saracens. Even, therefore, if the Cretan

allusion remained inexplicable, it would be reasonable to fix the date of the 'Philopatris' between 626 and 628 A.D., and hence in the reign of Heraclius.

Two German scholars, Gutschmid and Crampe, however, by an ingenious combination of the mention by George of Pisidia, the laureate of Heraclius, of maritime expeditions by the Avars, then pressing the Empire from the north, with the Syrian Presbyter Thomas's testimony to a Slavonic expedition against Crete in 623, appear to have removed the difficulty. Crampe, whose Philopatris ein heidnisches Konventikel' (Halle, 1894), is now the standard authority on the subject, would place this invasion in 621, to suit his own views as to the exact date of the composition of the 'Philopatris,' which we cannot but deem mistaken. Guided by indications which appear to us fallacious, he refers this to the winter of 622 or the spring of 623. It cannot be the winter, for, as we have seen, the tidings of victory are received while the nightingale is in full song. The campaign of 623 did not open until April, which scarcely allows time for the news of Heraclius's successes to reach Constantinople at the period required. Nor, important as they were, did these victories include the capture of any of the chief cities of Persia. The fall of illustrious Susa could not yet have been proclaimed without extravagant hyperbole. The successful termination of the war in 628, however, would justify the exultation of the writer, and fulfil every chronological requisite. The death of the vanquished King of Persia took place on February 28, 628, and we are expressly informed that the news reached Constantinople on May 15, when the nightingale would be singing, and the nights short, as required by another passage in the dialogue. This, therefore, is the especial incident to which we suppose the writer to allude, and the date which we should assign for the composition of his piece. It must be stated, however, that the latest investigator of the subject, Rohde, in an essay in the Byzantinische Zeitschrift,' vol. 5, adheres to Niebuhr's view. Perceiving, nevertheless, the necessity of finding some important victory to correspond with the fall of Susa proclaimed at the end of the dialogue, he identifies this with the capture of Antioch in A.D. 969. In so doing he overlooks two considerations. The capture did not occur in spring, as the dialogue requires, but, according to Zonaras, in the depth of winter. In the second place, singularly enough, it was so far from being a subject of unmixed congratulation that it actually

6

excited the displeasure of the person to whom the writer of the dialogue professes himself chiefly devoted, the Emperor himself. Alarmed by a prophecy that he would not long survive the taking of Antioch (nor did he), Nicephorus had forbidden his general to assault the city. A subordinate officer, finding a vulnerable point in the defences, seized upon it, and demanded support from his commander, which could not be refused. The advantage was followed up, and the city was taken contrary to the Emperor's orders, and so much to his dissatisfaction that he imprisoned the over-zealous subaltern in his own house.

If the document really belongs to the age of Heraclius, few results of modern research are more striking than this exhumation of a Pagan secret society in the seventh century, a generation after Augustine had begun the conversion of England. It would be most interesting could we gain access to these last representatives of an expiring creed through a more sympathetic channel, and learn from themselves how the world of their day appeared to them, and how they could imagine that the old order of things stood any chance of restoration in the time of Heraclius. A mere revival of classic ideals such as long afterwards inspired the Renaissance cannot have been in their minds. They must have contemplated the restoration of temples and sacrifices. This may seem sheer lunacy; it certainly was not sanity. Yet, some mitigating circumstances deserve to be taken into consideration. Degenerate as these Byzantines may have been, their connection with classical antiquity was far closer than any which we can attain to. What we can only realise by an effort of the imagination was a part of their daily life. They spoke the language, they possessed the literature, they enjoyed the climate, they were surrounded by the sculptures of Athens. To become Hellenes, we must turn the whole structure of our life upside down; they, as they deemed, had merely to get rid of some modern excrescences. The circumstances of their time must also be taken into account. The seventh century was perhaps the most miserable period in the history of mankind. Never since the invention of writing had the lamps of knowledge and culture burned so low; never had European civilisation been in more imminent peril of extinction. Men might well think that some change was needed; and, unable as most are to look forward, what wonder if some looked back? But another and less creditable reason had probably more weight than all the rest. Man

yearns for dealings with the incomprehensible, and the incomprehensible, which for the higher class of minds means the problems of philosophy or science, for the lower class means magic. It is to the honour of Christianity to have proscribed magical arts, but in so doing it impaired its influence over a large portion of mankind. The condemnation, moreover, was more adapted to promote than to discourage the pursuit of magic, being based upon moral, not intellectual, grounds. Christians did not forbid sorcery because they disbelieved in it, but because they believed. Men naturally resented being debarred from a study whose importance was admitted, and the believer in spells and incantations inevitably gravitated towards the heathenism which tolerated rather than the Christianity which forbade. Most of the conspicuous opponents of Christianity after Constantine were more or less addicted to magic, and there are clear traces of it in the mysterious synod described in the 'Philopatris.'

Imagination may easily transform the shadows of this longforgotten group into mortals, and an imagination endowed with the reconstructive power of the author of a 'Last Days of Pompeii' or a Quo Vadis' might find material for a brilliant historical picture. In the pages of such a writer we should encounter the sage wedded to the lore of the past; the fanatic avenger of the desecrated altars of antiquity; the romantic youth allured by the vision of a revived Hellas; the patriot loathing the barbarism and misery of the time; the magician and his dupes, longing to carry on dark practices under the ægis of a restored heathenism; woman inspired as priestess or enthusiastic as daughter or lover; in the background the Persian agent and the Imperial spy; at the dénouement, the martial figure of Heraclius, the Alexander of his age, returning like Cœur de Lion to set all right. Scott hardly wielded such resources when he undertook his own Byzantine romance. Should any deem this Pagan conventicle thus depicted, even though historical, too palpably and absurdly impotent to awaken a serious interest, they might be reminded that the seventh century, if one of the most deplorable ages in human history, was also one of the most fertile in dramatic surprises, and one of those which have most convincingly proved that the weak things of the world may be chosen to confound the mighty. They themselves, if shown the contemporary figures of the objects of the derision of the Pseudo-Lucian and of a barefooted Arab steering his camels amid the drought of the desert-and if assured 27

VOL. X.-NO. 59, N.S,

that the fate of the East lay in the hands of one of the two, and invited to determine which-might probably have reposed their anticipations upon the conclave of Constantinople rather than upon the camel-driver of Mecca.

When the apparent disproportion of his means to his achievements is considered, this Arabian camel-driver may well appear the greatest conqueror that the earth has ever known. It is not always remembered what efficient though unconscious allies he had among the potentates of the earth. The strife of Heraclius and Chosroes cleared the way for him. By immoderately depressing Persia Heraclius made the country an easy prey to the Saracens, and in giving them Persia he gave them Syria, and Egypt, and Africa, and Spain. The fault was not his: he had repeatedly offered honourable terms of peace, rejected by Persian pride. But the ultimate results of the victory acclaimed by our author with such natural exultation were probably more disastrous to Christendom than those of any defeat it ever sustained. Пloλai μορφαὶ τῶν δαιμονίων.