The Greek poetry of this period presents no work of high merit. Babrius versified the Aesopic _Fables_; Oppian (or two poets of this name) wrote didactic poems on fishing and hunting; Nonnus and Quintus Smyrnaeus made elaborate essays in epic verse; and the Orphic lore inspired some poems and hymns of a mystic character. The so-called _Sibylline Oracles_, in hexameter verse, range in date from about 170 B.C. to A.D. 700, and are partly the expression of the Jewish longings for the restoration of Israel, partly predictions of the triumph of Christianity. By far the most pleasing compositions in verse which have come to us from this age are some of the short poems in the Greek Anthology, which includes some pieces as early as the beginning of the 5th century B.C. and some as late as the 6th century of the Christian era. The 4th century may be said to mark the beginning of the last stage in the decay of literary Hellenism. From that point the decline was rapid and nearly continuous. The attitude of the church towards it was no longer that which had been held by Clement of Alexandria, by Justin Martyr or by Origen. There was now a Christian Greek literature, and a Christian Greek eloquence of extraordinary power. The laity became more and more estranged from the Greek literature--however intrinsically pure and noble--of the pagan past. At the same time the Greek language--which had maintained its purity in Italian seats--was becoming corrupted in the new Greek Rome of the East. In A.D. 529 Justinian put forth an edict by which the schools of heathen philosophy were formally closed. The act had at least a symbolical meaning. It is necessary to guard against the supposition that such assumed landmarks in political or literary history always mark a definite transition from one order of things to another. But it is practically convenient, or necessary, to use such landmarks.