The authors most conversant with Byzantine learning agree in this.
Nevertheless, there is one manifest difference between the Greek writers
of the worst period, such as the eighth century, and those who
correspond to them in the West. Syncellus, for example, is of great use
in chronology, because he was acquainted with many ancient histories now
no more. But Bede possessed nothing which we have lost; and his
compilations are consequently altogether unprofitable. The eighth
century, the Saeculum Iconoclasticum of Cave, low as it was in all polite
literature, produced one man, John Damascenus, who has been deemed the
founder of scholastic theology, and who at least set the example of that
style of reasoning in the East. This person, and Michael Psellus, a
philosopher of the eleventh century, are the only considerable men, as
original writers, in the annals of Byzantine literature.

[922] The honour of restoring ancient or heathen literature is due to
the Caesar Bardas, uncle and minister of Michael II. Cedrenus speaks of
it in the following terms: epemelethe de kai tes exo sophias, (en gar ek
pollou chronou pararrhueisa, kai pros te meden holos choresasa te ton
kratounton argia kai amathia) diatribas hekaste ton epistemon aphorisas,
ton men allon hope per etuche, tes d' epi pason epochou philosophias
kat' auta ta basileia en te Magnaura; kai houto ex ekeinou anebaskein
hai epistemai erxanto. k. t. l. Hist. Byzant. Script. (Lutet.) t. x. p.
547. Bardas found out and promoted Photius, afterwards patriarch of
Constantinople, and equally famous in the annals of the church and of
learning. Gibbon passes perhaps too rapidly over the Byzantine
literature, chap. 53. In this, as in many other places, the masterly
boldness and precision of his outline, which astonish those who have
trodden parts of the same field, are apt to escape an uninformed reader.

[923] Du Cange, Praefatio ad Glossar. Graecitatis Medii Evi. Anna Comnena
quotes some popular lines, which seem to be the earliest specimen extant
of the Romaic dialect, or something approaching it, as they observe no
grammatical inflexion, and bear about the same resemblance to ancient
Greek that the worst law-charters of the ninth and tenth centuries do to
pure Latin. In fact, the Greek language seems to have declined much in
the same manner as the Latin did, and almost at as early a period. In
the sixth century, Damascius, a Platonic philosopher, mentions the old
language as di