SOURCE: "Byzantium and the Crusades: Education, Learning, Literature, and Art," in History of the Byzantine Empire 324-1453, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1952, pp. 487-505.

In the following excerpt, Vasiliev examines the strong literary background of the Comneni imperial family.

The time of the Macedonian dynasty was marked by intense cultural activity in the field of learning, literature, education, and art. The activity of such men as Photius in the ninth century, Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the tenth, and Michael Psellus in the eleventh, with their cultural environment, as well as the revival of the High School of Constantinople, which was reformed in the eleventh century, created favorable conditions for the cultural renaissance of the epoch of the Comneni and Angeli. Enthusiasm for ancient literature was a distinctive feature of the time. Hesiod, Homer, Plato, the historians Thucydides and Polybius, the orators Isocrates and Demosthenes, the Greek tragedians and Aristophanes...