![]() ![]() If the young Procopius, journeying to Constantinople in his middle twenties, anticipated himself a second Lysias in another Athens, he was likely to be disappointed. ![]() And one who once dallies with the language of Aeschylus and Sappho is only too likely thereafter to disdain any country other than Arcady. If our historian shows at times a Grecian simplicity and an unorthodox distaste for the killing of heretics, it must be remembered that before he became a Roman he had been a Rhetorician, which profession required a long and thorough acquaintance with that seductive siren, Hellenic literature. Certainly his frequent allusions to the religion of his period, if they do not, in the words of Edward Gibbon, betray occasional conformity, with a secret attachment to Paganism and Philosophy, at least show the detached mind of a critic to whom the hierarchy is not exactly infallible. ![]() D., and apparently was one of those Samaritans whom he mentions in the 'Secret History' as adopting Christianity for formal protection and not at all for spiritual reasons. He was born in Caesarea in Palestine about 500 A. LIKE most notables of the Roman Empire in Byzantine times, the historian Procopius was not a Latin. ![]()
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