(b) _Greek Studies._--Meanwhile, the study of the Greek classics was ably represented at Rome in the Augustan age by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fl. 30-8 B.C.), the intelligent critic of the ancient Attic orators, while the 1st century of our era is the probable date of the masterpiece of literary criticism known as the treatise _On the Sublime_ by Longinus (q.v.).
The 2nd century is the age of the two great grammarians, Apollonius Dyscolus (the founder of scientific grammar and the creator of the study of Greek syntax) and his son Herodian, the larger part of whose principal work dealt with the subject of Greek accentuation. It is also the age of the lexicographers of Attic Greek, the most important of whom are Phrynichus, Pollux (fl. A.D. 180) and Harpocration.
In the 4th century Demosthenes was expounded and imitated by the widely influential teacher, Libanius of Antioch (c. 314-c. 393), the pagan preceptor of St Chrysostom. To the same century we may assign the grammarian Theodosius of Alexandria, who, instead of confining himself (like Dionysius Thrax) to the tenses of [Greek: thuptô] in actual use, was the first to set forth all the imaginary aorists and futures of that verb, which have thence descended through the Byzantine age to the grammars of the Renaissance and of modern Europe.
In the 5th century we may place Hesychius of Alexandria, the compiler of the most extensive of our ancient Greek lexicons, and Proclus, the author of a chrestomathy, to the extracts from which (as preserved by Photius) we owe almost all our knowledge of the contents of the lost epics of early Greece. In the same century the study of Plato was represented by Synesius of Cyrene (c. 370-c. 413) and by the Neoplatonists of Alexandria and of Athens. The lower limit of the Roman age of classical studies may be conveniently placed in the year 529. In that year the monastery of Monte Cassino was founded in the West, while the school of Athens was closed in the East. The Roman age thus ends in the West with Boëthius, Cassiodorus and St Benedict, and in the East with Priscian and Justinian.
(iii.) _The Middle Ages_.--(a) _In the East_, commonly called the _Byzantine Age_, c. 530-1350. In this age, grammatical learning was represented by Choeroboscus, and lexicography by Photius (d. 891), the patriarch of Constantinople, who is also the author of a _Bibliotheca_ reviewing and criticizing the contents of 280 MSS., and incidentally preserving important extracts from the lost Greek historians.