Among these imitations of Lucian, the Parisian library possessed for a short while three MSS., to which the Necyomanteia of Lucian had evidently served as models. One of these MSS. had been carried off from the Vatican and was restored in 1814, the other two are still in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris. They all three date from what may called the Greek Middle Age, and resemble each other in plan and idea. The poverty of the literature of the period imparts an adventitious interest to these remnants. The scene in each case is laid in Hades, the persons introduced are actual acquaintances of the writers, and give occasion for anecdotes, pleasantries, reflections, as well as allusions to contemporary events. They present however manifest differences in style and in degree of excellence. One MS. is incomplete. It is a bizarre jumble of Christian and pagan notions, of Lucian and the Apocalypse, very characteristic of the transition period of ideas amidst which it was written. The story relates how the writer wanders through unknown regions guided by an angel who explains to him the frightful scenes he beholds. These are very Dantesque. There are pits filled with sulphur and flame; abysses that open beneath the feet of the guilty and engulph them for ever; and so forth. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Lent, and other Church festivals, are personified as women of preternatural stature, with counnances more than human. They appear before the throne of God and accuse those who have infringed their feasts and observances. Perjurers, false witnesses, fraudulent merchants, sinners of all descriptions, are swallowed up by torrents of fire. A bridge breaks under some prelates who have allowed themselves to be corrupted by gifts. As the MS. is incomplete, however, it is not possible accurately to determine the tendency of the little jeu d'esprit. It is nevertheless manifest from the portion that remains, that, on the whole, the Christian element preponderates.

Excepting perhaps the Church fathers and the rhetoricians of the school of Antioch, few authors were more read and imitated by the Greeks of the Middle Ages than Lucian. The maxims that pervaded the Byzantine Empire were little calculated to encourage talent and the freedom of speech necessary to an historian. Such restraints upon a cultured people like the Byzantines were favourable to the production of allegorical satire and sure to evoke it, because under its cover freedom of speech could be indulged. The author of a satire could feel assured that the initiated would understand and be gratified at his malice, while the unversed would be amused, even if they did not know why. In the age of the Antonines, Lucian's works were largely copied and multiplied; and if the contemporaries of Heraclius did not fully appreciate the verve and grace of this elegant writer, they fully appreciated his themes. Besides this political restraint, another cause may have contributed to render the Greeks of the Middle Ages admirers of Lucian. Constantinople was at that time their literary centre. Even before Constantine had fixed his capital upon the shores of the Bosphorus, the citizens of that city enjoyed, together No. 632 (NC. CLII. N. s.)

with those of Antioch and Alexandria, the doubtful reputation of being naturally sarcastic, and of possessing a keen appreciation of humour. Under Caracalla the Alexandrians had to pay dear for this taste. The Emperor had been often the theme of Alexandrian raillery, and since, as Herodian quaintly puts it, their language is not wanting in force, often when they think to laugh, they very seriously pique those upon whom their sallies fall, and who therefore take the matter more seriously, for nothing offends like truth.' The people of Alexandria experienced this only too cruelly. They had expressed themselves with little reserve concerning the death of Geta, had nicknamed the Emperor, and mocked his statue. Julian, when so treated, returned the railleries of the people of Antioch in kind; Caracalla had recourse to other weapons. He nursed his resentment in silence. After his triumphal entry into Bithynia, when he endeavoured to imitate the progress of Alexander, he rested at Alexandria. The inhabitants greeted him warmly, and he appeared to return their feelings. On a given day he invited them all to a festival at the theatre to which they came unarmed, in perfect confidence. Scarcely however had they assembled, than at a signal from the Emperor the soldiers fell upon them and massacred them. Thus Caracalla avenged the lampoons upon his person.

St. John Chrysostom, in his Sermons, complains bitterly of the tendency among his hearers to turn everything into ridicule. With such a spirit rife among the inhabitants, what more natural than that Lucian should be a favourite author; what more natural than that more or less happy imitations abounded, most of them composed between the foundation and the taking of Constantinople. Scholars have even suspected that some of these have crept in among the works of Lucian, thanks to the carelessness of copyists. The MSS., as may be expected, vary in value; but all possess a certain worth, because from their very nature they paint contemporary society, and thus throw light upon a civilisation far remote from our own.

6

Of this kind are the other two MSS. of which we have spoken. They are separated from each other by the lapse of three centuries, during which the classical spirit still prevailing in the one had become much modified in the other. The more recent is the less interesting. It is headed Dialogue of the Dead (Διάλογος Νεκρικός). In the Parisian library it is catalogued under Cod. Gr. 2991A, under the title, Dialogi mortuorum, ubi Mazaris et illorum nonnulli, quibuscum in aula Constantinopolitana vixerat, colloquentes introducuntur.' It bears the character of a connected recital rather than that of a dialogue, for the hero, Mazaris, is throughout the narrator. begins by telling how a fearful pestilence ravaged Constantinople, from which no one was safe. At last, at the intercession of the Most High Patriarch, the pestilence was induced so far to avert its malignity that it changed its virulent form, and assumed the milder character of a sorethroat. Nevertheless it continued its devastations under this new shape, and Mazaris, being attacked, succumbed under

He

its scourge. While his household were quietly sleeping in their beds, unaware of what had happened to him, Mazaris suddenly found himself in a wide, deep valley, filled with a multitude of men, none of whom were either young or old, but all of whom seemed much of the same age. They differed only in feature and in the appearance they presented. All were naked, but while the bodies of some were perfectly whole, those of others were covered with wounds and scars. They were the guilty, whose evil deeds in the flesh were indicated by bloody stripes upon their bodies, as Socrates tells Callikles in Plato's 'Gorgias.' The others were void of reproach, but all were associated together. While Mazaris was regarding them and trying to recover from his astonishment, he was accosted by a man, named Manuel Holobolus, who began to question him eagerly concerning certain persons whom he had known during his lifetime at the Court of Constantinople, what positions they now filled, who had been disgraced, who superseded? Before Mazaris had time to reply to his eager interrogator, Holobolus began to pour forth his grievances against a certain Padiates who, according to him, had replaced him as secretary and favourite of the Emperor, by means more efficient than honourable. At the same time he does not scruple to narrate to Mazaris the doubtful actions of which he himself had been guilty while filling the post in question. These confidences are imparted to Mazaris under the thick shadow of a laurel tree. Hither Holobolus has led him out of earshot from the crowd. His precautions, however, are vain; their conversation is overheard by Padiates, who, finding himself thus unsparingly, and, as it appears, unjustly accused by a fellowcriminal, suddenly springs out of the bushes amid which he has lain hid, and in forcible rather than elegant terms requests Holobolus to be silent. This exchange of amenities continues a while, until Padiates, out of all patience, seizes a cudgel and smites Holobolus on the head, so that he sinks to the ground insensible. This deed causes great commotion among the spirits, who call out lustily for a physician. One Pepagomenus approaches, lays a healing herb upon the wounded head of Holobolus, and then himself enters into conversation with Mazaris. He is soon however interrupted by other spirits, for all are anxious to cull information from the upper world, and more than aught else the chronique scandaleuse of the period excites their curiosity. The only person who shows anything like intelligent interest is a musician, Lampadarius, whom Mazaris meets in a grove of planes and elms, among whose branches singing birds chirp in varied tones. He asks Mazaris regarding his sons, deploring their vile conduct. One has turned Nazarene and become a monk, while leading, under cover of his gown, a most dissolute life. The other has nominally continued in his father's profession, but instead of holding it in high honour, has prostituted it to enliven the debauches of the worthless rich idlers of Constantinople. Holobolus, who has never lost sight of Mazaris since his entry into Hades, now grows impatient at the length of Lampadarius' disquisitions upon the high calling of his

beloved profession. Already, when Mazaris entered Hades, Holobolus asked him why he had come before the Moira had cut his life's thread, and where was the good of coming hither so poor that he could not even defray the needful double obolus to Charon, which had been fixed as the tax for transport. He incites him, while it is yet time, to return to the upper world, enrich himself, and not come back to Hades before he can possibly help it. He points out a stream flowing hard by that is fringed by rushes. Go aside thither,' he whispers, and hide yourself, and after a time you will return with joy and safety to the light of the sun.' He then gives him various directions how to act, as well as messages to dwellers upon the earth, and again urges him to expedition, for, he says, if the fame of his presence should spread yet further, he will be questioned night and day by troops of spirits all eager to hear what is happening above; and, he adds, 'if this should come about, which Heaven forefend, you will now and never get out of Hades, as I shall never get thence until the trumpet sounds for the Judgment Day.'

Here the recital closes abruptly, the writer merely adding these words: I wrote this, gentlemen, induced rather by my tears than by laughter, rather for instruction than amusement, more seriously than playfully.' It would appear that Mazaris, like Thespius of Soli, was not of the number of the dead as yet, but by a certain destiny and permission of the gods had come to Hades only with his intellectual faculties, having left the rest of his soul, like an anchor, in his body.

Ellisen, who has printed this dialogue in his Analecta from mediæval and new Greek literature; Hase, who first discovered it among the Parisian MSS.; Boissonade the scholar-have all three expended much learned ingenuity in unravelling the obscure allusions with which the little work abounds. Many of these have a purely learned and archæological interest, others a purely philological one; but some are of general interest. Foremost must be placed their endeavour to fix the date of the MS. This it has been possible to determine, although the libels it contains are not directed against any personages whose names have come down to us. Thus, Holobolus speaks of having accompanied the Emperor on his voyages in Britain and Gaul. This can only refer to Manuel Palæologus (1391-1425), who traversed Europe to solicit help against the Turks. The satire of Mazaris throws some light on the court of this monarch, the petty intrigues of his courtiers, his own degradation, and the crimes and place-hunting of his favourites, as well as the political state of Greece in the fifteenth century. We learn thence that the peoples living on the shores of the Danube were in constant communication with the Greeks, to whom they were drawn by conformity of religion and manners. We gather from a remark let fall by Lampadarius, that a voyage into Wallachia was deemed by the inhabitants of Constantinople as a sure means of making or re-establishing a fortune, while the Arab names borne by many of the personages who appear in the piece indicate the growing influence of the East upon

the West. Even the religion of Islam appears to have found more or less willing converts, thus cementing a connection between the Greeks and the invading Turks.

It is not easy, from internal evidence, to fix the writer's social status. He appears to have been poor-at least he is reproached with this by the inhabitants of Hades, who seem to concur with the Russian proverb, Poverty is not a sin, but twice as bad.' It is not probable that he was an ecclesiastic, or if he was, he was above the fanaticism of his time, for he speaks with no reserve and much contempt of monastic abuses and licentiousness. He was evidently well acquainted with all the internal affairs of the palace. Can he have filled some such post as Procopius under Belisarius? His horizon is clearly limited to the unrefreshing atmosphere of writers and fawning courtiers. The remnants of former splendour that composed the Rhomaic kingdom consisted early in the fifteenth century of a poverty-stricken and degenerate court. Cabals, quarrels, feuds, corruption, furnish the sole themes of talk in Hades. As a purer picture there looms in the background the figure of the well-meaning, but isolated and helpless Emperor, who brought home nothing save the assurance of his moral and physical defeat from his frequent errands to his more powerful neighbours. The position of the sick man in Constantine's empire is very similar to that of his successor at the Sublime Porte to-day. Troubles without, dissensions within. The picture is painted with a broad remorseless pencil. There is no delicacy of touch or of treatment. But it is stamped with an unmistakable air of veracity. The thought and speech of every person introduced only revolves round himself and his personal concerns. Large questions of the common weal have no interest to them. If the state advances their sons, they wish it success; if it fails so to do, they condemn it. The judges are venal, the officials incompetent and dishonest, the physicians quacks or poisoners. Altogether Mazaris' visit to Hades affords a far from enlivening picture of good society in the city of the holy Constantine a generation before its fall. The social photograph thus unconsciously furnished resembles a sombre shadow hanging over the Eastern Empire, the agent and harbinger of its destruction. The whole composition is distinguished rather by burlesque humour than by refined satire. Mazaris' praises of the Emperor, and his projected reforms may have been an endeavour to help him in his good intentions by means of easily intelligible sarcasms. This may explain the concluding words, that seem to point to an ulterior purpose.

We now come to the third MS., the one abstracted from the Vatican, and which is the most curious of all. Its full title is 'The Sufferings of Timarion 3 (Τιμαρίον ἢ περὶ τῶν κατ' αὐτὸν παθημάτων). A well preserved codex, elegantly written upon silk paper of the fourteenth century, its composition dates from the twelfth century of

our era.

The dialogue opens by Cydion questioning his friend Timarion,