=Athanasius.=—A century after Longinus, lived Athanasius, one of the main pillars of the early Christian Church. His life was spent in contentions with Arius and his followers, who denied the equality of Christ with the Father; in controversy with them, his vigorous pen was constantly employed. =St. Chrysostom= (_golden-mouthed_, so called from his eloquence—350-407) was the most famous of the Greek fathers. He was archbishop of Constantinople, and a voluminous writer of homilies, epistles, and commentaries. His language is elegant, and his fund of figures inexhaustible. LIGHT LITERATURE. =Novel-Writers.=—The novel and romance are not unrepresented in Greek literature. HELIODO’RUS, a Phœnician by birth, who lived toward the close of the fourth century, obtained a well-deserved reputation as the author of “Æthiopica,” a touching, pure-toned, but somewhat sensational, romance. Its heroine, Charicle’a, an Ethiopian princess, exposed by her mother in infancy and brought up in ignorance of her birth, with her lover Theagenes, falls into the hands of pirates and undergoes a variety of adventures. The tale ends happily, quite in the modern style. Heliodorus, later in life, gave up novel-writing for a mitre, being made bishop of Tricca in Thessaly. Another Greek novelist, perhaps a contemporary of Heliodorus, perhaps belonging to a later generation, was LONGUS, author of the “Loves of Daphnis and Chloë.” The scene of this pastoral love-story is laid in the groves of Lesbos, where the hero and heroine have grown up together in the bonds of innocent affection, _à la_ “Paul and Virginia.” The “Story of Leucippe and Cli’tophon,” by ACHILLES TA’TIUS, an Alexandrian rhetorician who flourished about 500, stands next to the “Æthiopica” among the Greek novels. =Hierocles.=—The “Facetiæ” of Hierocles (5th century) must not be forgotten in this connection. Though a Neo-Platonist, grave and learned enough to discuss “Providence and Fate” and make a volume of profound commentaries on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, he evidently enjoyed a good joke. He has left us twenty-eight brief stories of _Scholastici_, or bookworms so unsophisticated and unused to the ways of the world that we may call them simpletons. A few of these are given as samples of his humor; from which it may be seen that some of the wit that passes for modern is as old as Hierocles. STORIES OF SIMPLETONS. A simpleton, wishing to swim, was nearly drowned; whereupon he swore that he would never touch the water until he had learned how to swim. A simpleton, visiting a sick person, inquired about his health. He, however, was not able to reply. Thereupon the simpleton, being angry and scolding the man, said: “I hope that I shall be sick some of these days, and then when you come to ask how I am, I will not answer.”