We must now turn from examining public history, to consider popular feeling. Belisarius, as we have already observed, was the hero of the Roman world; but another society existed in the very heart of that world, which hated every thing Roman. This society was Greek; it had its own feelings, its own literature, and its own church. Of its literature, Procopius has left us a curious specimen in his Secret History, where the facts of his public Roman history are presented to the discontented Greeks, richly spiced with calumny and libels on the Roman administration. Peculiar circumstances gave the reign of Justinian a prominent position in the history of the world, as the last great era of Roman history, and its memory was long cherished with a feeling of wonder and awe.[47] We must, however, remark, that from the death of Justinian to the accession of Leo III. the Isaurian, the government of the Eastern empire was strictly Roman. From the reign of Leo III. to that of Basil I. the Macedonian (867) if not quite Roman, it was very far from Greek. Three centuries after the death of Belisarius and Justinian, new feelings arose. The Greeks then looked back on the authentic history of Belisarius as they did on that of Scipio and Sylla,--as a history unconnected with their own national glory, but marking the last conquests which illustrated the annals of the Roman empire, and affording one of those mighty names admirably adapted "To point a moral, or adorn a tale." We must now endeavour to prove that its use for this purpose, in the manner transmitted to us, was subsequent to the accession of Basil the Macedonian. We believe that the blindness and beggary of Belisarius, as recorded in the Greek romance, of which the memory has become a part of the tradition of Western Europe, was suggested to the novelist by the fate of Symbat, an Armenian noble in the Byzantine service, who married the daughter of the Caesar Bardas, the uncle of the Emperor Michael III. The catastrophe of the romance is mentioned by two writers of the twelfth century. One is the anonymous author of a description of Constantinople, who was a cotemporary of Zonaras. The other is John Tzetzes, who wrote a rambling work consisting of mythological and historical notices in Greek political, civil, or profane verse, as it may be called, (_versus politici_)--the epic poetry of modern Greece; correctly compared by Lord Byron to the heroic strain of "A captain bold of Halifax who lived in country quarters." This poet flourished at the end of the twelfth century.