Scholars of Byzantium

by N.G. Wilson

'This most valuable work should interest students and scholars of both pagan and Christian Hellenism for its study of literature, history of education, book makers and language script and school curricula. It successfully synthesises the efforts of Byzantine educated persons who laboured to preserve the texts of ancient Greece, apply to them methods of scholarship, and adopt them in the curricula of their own times.' Demetrios J. Constantelos, Classical World

Genres: History, Nonfiction

296 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1983

About the author

Sometimes published as Nigel G. Wilson.

Reviews

[Anatolikon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wilson is interested in tracing out the survival and reception of classical Greek literature in Byzantium. While his range is vast and many of his judgements of individual figures are intriguing, the book is hobbled by a slant that suggests Wilson does not much like what he's studying. He doesn't entirely blame Byzantium for the loss of classical Greek literature; the crusaders in 1204 get their share of the blame as well, but the general attitude is negative. He closes the book with the quotation by Gibbon about how Byzantium would have been a better place had it been more influenced by the classical literature it possessed. He claims to disagree with this assessment, but that's really not the generally impression one gets from the book. He rarely has a good word for Byzantine authors, but classical ones are described in flattering terms - the loss of "witty Callimachus" is a tragedy, but we'd never see such language applied to a Byzantine author. Wilson tries to be sympathetic at times, but all he really does is judge Byzantine literature by classical standards, and his conclusion is that it comes up short. Despite these critiques, this book has a wealth of information in it and often insightful material on the individual authors under discussion. If one can look past the slant of the author towards Byzantine literature, this book is full of riches.