whose work is also lost to us. But, though the method lends itself to the multiplication of vain subtleties, it is absolutely indispensable for scientific historiography. It is in fact part of the science of evidence. The distinction of primary and derivative authorities might be used as a test. The untrained historian fails to recognize that nothing is added to the value of a statement of Widukind by its repetition by Thietmar or Ekkehard, and that a record in the Continuation of Theophanes gains no further credibility from the fact that it likewise occurs in Cedrenus, Zonaras, or Glycas. On the other hand, it is irrelevant to condemn a statement of Zonaras as made by a "modern Greek". The question is, where did he get it??
The difficult questions connected with the authorship and compilation of the Historia Augusta have produced a chestful of German pamphlets, but they did not trouble Gibbon. The relationships of the later Greek chronicles and histories are more difficult and intricate even than the questions raised by the Historia Augusta, but he did not even formulate a prudent interrogation. Ferdinand Hirsch, thirty years ago, cleared new roads through this forest, in which George the Monk and the Logothete who continued him, Leo Grammaticus and Simeon Magister, John Scylitzes, George Cedrenus, and Zonaras lived in promiscuous obscurity.
Criticism, too, has rejected some sources from which Gibbon Example of drew without suspicion. In the interest of literature we may untrust- perhaps be glad that like Ockley he used with confidence the sources now discredited Al Wakidi. Before such maintained perfec- tion of manner, to choose is hard; but the chapters on the origin of Mahometanism and its first triumphs against the Empire would alone be enough to win perpetual literary fame. Without Al Wakidi's romance they would not have been
* Gibbon had a notion of this, but did not apply it methodically. See in this vol., p. 448, note 60: "but those modern Greeks had the opportunity of con- sulting many writers which have since been lost". And see, in general, his Preface to the fourth volume of the quarto ed.
the Verona List (published by Mommsen), which, dating from 297 A.D., shows Diocletian's reorganization. The modifications which were made between this year and the beginning of the fifth century when the Notitia Dignitatum was drawn up, can largely be determined not only by lists in Rufus and Ammianus, but, as far as the eastern provinces are concerned, by the Laterculus of Polemius Silvius. Thus, partly by critical method applied to Polemius, partly by the discovery of a new document, we are enabled to rectify the list of Gibbon, who adopted the simple plan of ascribing to Diocletian and Con- stantine the detailed organization of the Notitia. Otherwise our knowledge of the changes of Diocletian has not been greatly augmented; but our clearer conception of the Principate and its steady development towards pure monarchy has reflected light on Diocletian's system; and the tendencies of the third century, though still obscure at many points, have been made more distinct. The constitutional and administrative history of the Empire from Diocletian forward has still to be written systematically.
Gibbon's forty-fourth chapter is still not only famous, but admired by jurists as a brief and brilliant exposition of the principles of Roman law. To say that it is worthy of the subject is the best tribute that can be paid to it. A series of foreign scholars of acute legal ability has elaborated the study of the science in the present century. The manuscript of Gaius is the new discovery to be recorded; and we can imagine with what interest Gibbon, were he restored to earth, would com- pare in Gneist's parallel columns the Institutions with the elder treatise.
But whoever takes up Gibbon's theme now will not be con- tent with an exposition of the Justinianean Law. He must go on to its later development in the subsequent centuries, in the company of Zachariä von Lingenthal and Heimbach. Such a study has been made possible and comparatively easy by the works of Zacharia; among whose achievements I may single
out his restoration of the Ecloga, which used to be ascribed to Leo VI., to its true author Leo III.; a discovery which illumin- ated in a most welcome manner the Isaurian reformation.
Not a few entirely new texts, of considerable importance as historical sources, have been printed during the nineteenth century. Among these may be mentioned the treatise De magistratibus of John Lydus, the History of Psellus, the Memoir of Cecaumenus, the history of the Ottoman conquest by Critobulus. Fresh light has also been thrown on many periods by Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, and Ethiopic sources, drawn from the obscurity of their MSS., such as Zacharias of Mytilene, John of Ephesus, Sebaeos, John of Nikiu, Tabari. I may specially refer to the Book of the Conquest of the Morea, The first published by Buchon, and recently edited critically by of Morea Schmitt. It is a mixture of fiction and fact, but invaluable for realising the fascinating though complicated history of the "Latin" settlements in Greece. That history was set aside by Gibbon, with the phrase, "I shall not pursue the obscure History of and various dynasties that rose and fell on the continent or in after the the isles," though he deigns to give a page or two to Athens. Conquest But it is a subject with unusual possibilities for picturesque treatment, and out of which, Gibbon, if he had apprehended the opportunity, and had possessed the materials, would have made a brilliant chapter. Since Finlay, who entered into this episode of Greek history with great fulness, the material has been largely increased by the researches of Hopf.
Having illustrated by examples the advantages open to an historian of the present day, which were not open to Gibbon, for dealing with Gibbon's theme,-improved and refined methods, a closer union of philology with history, and ampler material— we may go on to consider a general defect in his treatment of
* Some of the new texts which have been published are important for the help they give in determining the relations of our sources, though they supply no new information; e.g., the chronicle of Theodosius of Melitene published by Tafel.
The history of medieval Athens has been recorded at length in an attractive work by Gregorovius, the counterpart of his great history of medieval Rome,
the Later Empire, and here too exhibit, by a few instances, progress made in particular departments.
Gibbon ended the first half of his work with the so-called the fall of the Western Empire in 476 A.D.-a date which has been
fixed out of regard for Italy and Rome, and should strictly be 480 A.D. in consideration of Julius Nepos.
Thus the same space is which is allowed to the
devoted to the first three hundred years remaining nine hundred and eighty. Nor does the inequality end here. More than a quarter of the second half of the work deals with the first two of these ten centuries. The mere state- ment of the fact shows that the history of the Empire from Heraclius to the last Grand Comnenus of Trebizond is merely a sketch with certain episodes more fully treated. The personal history and domestic policy of all the Emperors, from the son of Heraclius to Isaac Angelus, are compressed into one chapter. This mode of dealing with the subject is in harmony with the author's contemptuous attitude to the "Byzantine" or "Lower " Empire.
But Gibbon's account of the internal history of the Empire niform- after Heraclius is not only superficial; it gives an entirely false impression of the facts. If the materials had been then as well sifted and studied as they are even to-day, he could not have failed to see that beneath the intrigues and crimes of the Palace there were deeper causes at work, and beyond the revolutions of the Capital City wider issues implied. Nor had he any conception of the great ability of most of the Emperors from Leo the Isaurian to Basil II., or, we might say, to Constantine the conqueror of Armenia. The designation of the story of the later Empire as a "uniform tale of weakness and as to misery" is one of the most untrue, and most effective, judg- ments ever uttered by a thoughtful historian. Before the out- rage of 1204, the Empire was the bulwark of the West.
Against Gibbon's point of view there has been a gradual reaction which may be said to have culminated during the last
5 Chap. xlviii. ad init., where a full statement of his view of the later Empire will be found.
twenty years of the nineteenth century.
Finlay, whose unprosperous speculations in Greece after the Revolution prompted him to seek for the causes of the insecurity of investments in land, and, leading him back to the year 146 B.C., involved him in a history of the "Byzantine Empire" which embedded a history of Greece. The great value of Finlay's work lies not only in its impartiality and in his trained discernment of the commercial and financial facts underlying the superficial history of the chronicles, but in its full and trustworthy narration of the events. By the time that Mr. Tozer's edition of Finlay appeared in 1876, it was being recog- nized that Gibbon's word on the later Empire was not the last. Meanwhile Hertzberg was going over the ground in Germany, other re- and Gfrörer, whose ecclesiastical studies had taken him into those regions, had written a good deal of various value. Hirsch's Byzantinische Studien had just appeared, and Rambaud's ad- mirable monograph l'Empire grec au xme siècle. M. Sathas was bringing out his Bibliotheca Græca medii aevi-including two volumes of Psellus-and was beginning his Documents inédits. Professor Lambros was working at his Athens in the Twelfth Century and preparing his editio princeps of the great Arch- bishop Akominatos. Hopf had collected a mass of new materials from the archives of southern cities. In England, Freeman was pointing out the true position of New Rome and her Em- perors in the history of Europe.
These tendencies have since increased in volume and velo- city. It may be said that the subject entered on a new stage through the publication of Professor Krumbacher's History of Byzantine Literature." The importance of this work, of vast Krum- scope and extraordinary accuracy, can only be fully understood by the specialist. It has already promoted and facilitated the progress of the study in an incalculable measure; and it was
"Since then a Greek scholar, K. Paparrigopulos, has covered the whole his- tory of Greece from the earliest times to the present century, in his 'Iotopía Toû Ἑλληνικοῦ ἔθνους.
7 Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (565-1453), 1891; second greatly enlarged edition (with co-operation of Ehrhard and Gelzer), 1897.
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