The Eastern Empire, founded by Constantine, had no ennobling traditions of any kind, for it was neither Greece nor Rome. It possessed neither the power nor the energy requisite to discover and appreciate the new end of activity introduced by Christian ideas. Hence, there was no progress in the intellectual domain, or in the fine arts; hence, also, every thing that tended to ameliorate the social state and exalt all ranks, advanced with languor at Byzantium. It was her office simply to guard the palladium of human weal during the ten centuries of western formations, and then to fall to rise no more till a succeeding cycle shall redeem her in common with the entire old hemisphere. Greek literature continued to decline under the Greek emperors. A vast number of books, produced during this period, have been preserved, but only a very small portion of them inspire much interest. It is a singular fact, that, even when the Latin language was in its highest cultivation, no Greek seems to have studied it, much less to have attempted to write it. But the Latins, on the contrary, so long as any taste remained among them, did not cease to admire and to cultivate the language of Greece. Like every other valuable current, taste and learning move westward only. Placed between Asia and Europe, Byzantium became the great centre to which learned men could resort, and stimulate each other by mutual collision. Justinian reigned from A.D. 527 to 565. He was a talented prince, who, among the noblest objects of ambition, disdained not the less illustrious name of poet and philosopher, lawyer and theologian, musician and architect. It might have been expected that under such auspices literature and art would not only claim the highest patronage, but produce corresponding results. Few works, however, of any eminence appeared, except the laborious compilations on jurisprudence, under the titles of the Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes, which were partly extracted from the writings of former civilians, and digested into a complete system of law, by the great scholar and statesman Tribonian. Justinian espoused such labors as were connected with his own glory; while in other respects he has been represented as an enemy to learning, when, by an edict, he imposed a perpetual silence on the schools of Athens; and when, from rapacity, or from the real want of money to complete the expensive edifices on which he was engaged, he confiscated the stipends, which, in many cities, had been appropriated from a remote period to support the masters of liberal arts.