ent Greek
became extinct, and the varieties of the modern language are all
differentiations of the 'koine', along geographical lines which in no way
correspond with those which divided Doric from Ionian. Yet though Romaic
is descended from the 'koine', it is almost as far removed from it as
modern Italian is from the language of St. Augustine or Cicero. Ancient
Greek possessed a pitch-accent only, which allowed the quantitative values
of syllables to be measured against one another, and even to form the
basis of a metrical system. In Romaic the pitch-accent has transformed
itself into a stress-accent almost as violent as the English, which has
destroyed all quantitative relation between accented and unaccented
syllables, often wearing away the latter altogether at the termination of
words, and always impoverishing their vowel sounds. In the ninth century
A.D. this new enunciation was giving rise to a new poetical technique
founded upon accent and rhyme, which first essayed itself in folk-songs
and ballads,[1] and has since experimented in the same variety of forms as
English poetry.

[Footnote 1: The earliest products of the modern technique were called
'city' verses, because they originated in Constantinople, which has
remained 'the city' _par excellence_ for the Romaic Greek ever since the
Dark Age made it the asylum of his civilization.]

These humble beginnings of a new literature were supplemented by the
rudiments of a new art. Any visitor at Athens who looks at the three tiny
churches [1] built in this period of first revival, and compares them with
the rare pre-Norman churches of England, will find the same promise of
vitality in the Greek architecture as in his own. The material--worked
blocks of marble pillaged from ancient monuments, alternating with courses
of contemporary brick--produces a completely new aesthetic effect upon the
eye; and the structure--a grouping of lesser cupolas round a central dome--
is the very antithesis of the 'upright-and-horizontal' style which
confronts him in ruins upon the Akropolis.

[Footnote 1: The Old Metropolitan, the Kapnikaria, and St. Theodore.]

These first achievements of Romaic architecture speak by implication of
the characteristic difference between the Romaios and the Hellene. The
linguistic and the aesthetic change were as nothing compared to the change
in religion, for while the Hellene had been a pagan, the Romaios was
essentially a member of the Christian Chu