DECADENCE OF THE GREEK SPIRIT.--Vitality was slowly withdrawn from the
Grecian world, although not without revivals and highly interesting
semi-renaissances. In the fourth century, the sophist--that is, the
professor of philosophy and of rhetoric--Libanius left a vast number of
official or academic discourses and letters which were dissertations.
Like his friend the Emperor Julian, he was a convinced pagan, and with
kindly but firm spirit combated the Christian bishops, priests, and
particularly the monks, who were objects of veritable repulsion to him.
He possessed talent of a secondary but honourable rank.

THE EMPEROR JULIAN.--The Emperor Julian, a Christian in childhood, but
who on attaining manhood reverted to paganism, which earned him the title
of "the Apostate," was highly intelligent, pure in heart, and filled with
a spirit of tolerance; but he was a heathen and he wrote against
Christianity. He possessed satiric force and wit, even a measure of
eloquence. A pamphlet by him, the _Misopogon_, directed against the
inhabitants of Antioch, who had chaffed him about his beard, makes
amusing reading. He died quite young; he would, in all probability, have
become a very great man.

PROCOPIUS.--It is necessary to advance to the sixth century to mention
the historian Procopius, that double-visaged annalist who, in his
official histories, was lost in admiration of Justinian, and who, in his
_Secret History_, only published long after his death, related to us
the turpitude, real or imagined, of Theodora, wife of the Emperor
Justinian, and of Antonina, wife of Belisarius.

POETRY.--Greek poetry was not dead. Quintus of Smyrna, who was of the
fourth century, perhaps later, wrote a _Sequel to Homer_, without
much imagination, but with skill and dexterity; Nonnus wrote the