Of his works, he says in his ‘Prooemium’ that he wrote in his youth the ‘Daphniaca,’ a volume of short poems in hexameters, set off with love-tales.  His ‘Anthology,’ or ‘Cyclus,’ was a collection of poems of early writers, and also compositions of his friend Paulus Silentiarius and others of his time.  A number of his epigrams, preserved because they were written before or after his publication of the ‘Cyclus,’ have come down to us and are contained in the ‘Anthologia Graeca.’  His principal work is his ‘Historia,’ which is an account of the conquest of Italy by Narses, of the first war between the Greeks and Franks, of the great earthquakes and plagues, of the war between the Greeks and Persians, and the deeds of Belisarius in his contest with the Huns,—­of all that was happening in the world Agathias knew between 553 and 558 A.D., while he was a young man.  He tells, for instance, of the rebuilding of the great Church of St. Sophia by Justinian, and he adds:—­“If any one who happens to live in some place remote from the city wishes to get a clear notion of every part, as though he were there, let him read what Paulus [Silentiarius] has composed in hexameter verse.”

The history of Agathias is valuable as a chronicle.  It shows that the writer had little knowledge of geography, and was not enough of a philosopher to look behind events and trace the causes from which they proceeded.  He is merely a simple and honest writer, and his history is a business-like entry of facts.  He dwells upon himself and his wishes with a minuteness that might seem self-conscious, but is really naif; and goes so far in his outspokenness as to say that if for the sake of a livelihood he took up another profession, his taste would have led him to devote himself to the Muses and Graces.

He wrote in the Ionic dialect of his time.  The best edition of his ‘Historia’ is that of Niebuhr (1828).  Those of his epigrams preserved in the Greek anthology have not infrequently been turned into English; the happiest translation of all is that of Dryden, in his ’Life of Plutarch.’

     ON PLUTARCH

     Cheronean Plutarch, to thy deathless praise
     Does martial Rome this grateful statue raise;
     Because both Greece and she thy fame have shar’d
     (Their heroes written, and their lives compar’d);
     But thou thyself could’st never write thy own: 
     Their lives have parallels, but thine has none.

GRACE AGUILAR

(1816-1847)

Fifty years ago a Jewish writer of English fiction was a new and interesting figure in English literature.  Disraeli, indeed, had flashed into the literary world with ‘Coningsby,’ that eloquent vindication of the Jewish race.  His grandiose ‘Tancred’ had revealed to an astonished public the strange life of the Desert, of the mysterious vastness whence swept forth the tribes who became the Moors of Spain and the Jews of Palestine.  Disraeli, however, stood in no category, and established no precedent.  But when Miss Aguilar’s stories began to appear, they were eagerly welcomed by a public with whom she had already won reputation and favor as the defender and interpreter of her faith.