note 102: By Laonicus Chalcocondyles, who survived the last siege
of Constantinople, the account is thus stated, (l. i. p. 3.) Constantine
transplanted his Latins of Italy to a Greek city of Thrace: they adopted
the language and manners of the natives, who were confounded with
them under the name of Romans. The kings of Constantinople, says the
historian.]

While the government of the East was transacted in Latin, the Greek was
the language of literature and philosophy; nor could the masters of
this rich and perfect idiom be tempted to envy the borrowed learning and
imitative taste of their Roman disciples. After the fall of Paganism,
the loss of Syria and Egypt, and the extinction of the schools of
Alexandria and Athens, the studies of the Greeks insensibly retired
to some regular monasteries, and above all, to the royal college of
Constantinople, which was burnt in the reign of Leo the Isaurian. [103]
In the pompous style of the age, the president of that foundation was
named the Sun of Science: his twelve associates, the professors in the
different arts and faculties, were the twelve signs of the zodiac; a
library of thirty-six thousand five hundred volumes was open to their
inquiries; and they could show an ancient manuscript of Homer, on a roll
of parchment one hundred and twenty feet in length, the intestines, as
it was fabled, of a prodigious serpent. [104] But the seventh and eight
centuries were a period of discord and darkness: the library was burnt,
the college was abolished, the Iconoclasts are represented as the
foes of antiquity; and a savage ignorance and contempt of letters has
disgraced the princes of the Heraclean and Isaurian dynasties. [105]

[Footnote 103: See Ducange, (C. P. Christiana, l. ii. p. 150, 151,) who
collects the testimonies, not of Theophanes, but at least of Zonaras,
(tom. ii. l. xv. p. 104,) Cedrenus, (p. 454,) Michael Glycas, (p. 281,)
Constantine Manasses, (p. 87.) After refuting the absurd charge against
the emperor, Spanheim, (Hist. Imaginum, p. 99-111,) like a true
advocate, proceeds to doubt or deny the reality of the fire, and almost
of the library.]

[Footnote 104: According to Malchus, (apud Zonar. l. xiv. p. 53,) this
Homer was burnt in the time of Basiliscus. The Ms. might be renewed--But
on a serpent's skin? Most strange and incredible!]

[Footnote 105: The words of Zonaras, and of Cedrenus, are strong words,
perhaps not ill suited to those reigns.]

In the ninth cent