of insight and sympathetic understanding. There followed the
editions of 1866, 1871, 1873, 1875, 1887, and 1904. In the final
edition of 1904 the text was revised with scrupulous care, and
now not only did he add three maps, a Chronological Table of
Important Events in the History of the Empire which ran to
twenty-eight pages, a new Epilogue, and twenty-four long
Additional Notes, but having read the works of Krumbacher,
Gelzer, and Bury, as he tells us, he felt that for his book to be
complete there must be inserted a chapter on the East Roman
Empire. For a student of Byzantine history it is pleasant to
think that Bryce thus widened his horizon to include in his
survey that other Holy Roman Empire of the East which had
its capital in the city of Constantine. My remarks this after-
noon are conceived simply as a marginal note on the seven-
teenth chapter of this last edition of Bryce's classic book.

It is unfortunate that the Greeks thought that they were
justified in allowing the Hellenistic age to fall into oblivion. In
their eyes it was a regrettable interlude in Greek history: they
took no pains to preserve its literature and resolutely returned
to the masterpieces of the Great Age. And thus it is that the
three centuries after the death of Alexander, so far as the East
Mediterranean lands are concerned, however much intensive
study modern scholars may give to them, will always remain
an obscure period beset with doubts and problems while the
works which might have given to us the thought of the age are
represented only by such fragments as those collected by
Stobaeus in his Florilegium. The loss of the literature of the
Hellenistic Age we can never cease to deplore, for it leaves a
gap in the story of the intellectual development of the Greek
world which cannot be filled by arguing back from the better-
known history of the Principate. Man cannot be trusted to
estimate the significance of his own past achievement: he must
at least seek to preserve the record for the judgement of pos-
terity. The British Museum Library, the Bodleian Library,
they are our tribute of pietas to the departed.

As I see it, the Byzantines are the intellectual heirs of the
Hellenistic Age: that age acquired the habit of looking back-
wards to a past which in retrospect became only the more won-
derful. So the Byzantines, their gaze fixed on the distant

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