Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology Part 39

At the court of Justinian, A.D. 527-565, Greek poetry made its last serious effort; and together with the imposing victories of Belisarius and the final codification of Roman law carried out by the genius of Tribonian, his reign is signalised by a group of poets who still after three hundred years of barbarism handled the old language with remarkable grace and skill, and who, though much of their work is but clever imitation of the antique, and though the verbosity and vague conventionalism of all Byzantine writing keeps them out of the first rank of epigrammatists, are nevertheless not unworthy successors of the Alexandrians, and represent a culture which died hard. Eight considerable names come under this period, five of them officials of high place in the civil service or the imperial household, two more, and probably the third also, practising lawyers at Constantinople.

AGATHIAS son of Mamnonius, poet and historian, was born at Myrina in Mysia about the year 536 A.D. He received his early education in Alexandria, and at eighteen went to Constantinople to study law. Soon afterwards he published a volume of poems called /Daphniaca/ in nine books. The preface to it (/Anth. Pal./ vi. 80) is still extant, and many of his epigrams were no doubt included in it. His History, which breaks off abruptly in the fifth book, covers the years 553-558 A.D.; in the preface to it he speaks of his own early works, including his Anthology of recent and contemporary epigrams. One of the most pleasant of his poems is an epistle to his friend Paulus Silentiarius, written from a country house on the opposite coast of the Bosporus, where he had retired to pursue his legal studies away from the temptations of the city. He tells us himself that law was distasteful to him, and that his time was chiefly spent in the study of ancient poetry and history. In later life he seems to have returned to Myrina, where he carried out improvements in the town and was regarded as the most distinguished of the citizens (/Anth. Pal./ ix. 662). He is believed to have died about 582 A.D. Agathias is the author of ninety- seven epigrams in the Anthology, in a facile and diffuse style; often they are exorbitantly long, some running to twenty-four and even twenty-eight lines.

ARABIUS, author of seven epigrams in the Anthology, is called {skholastikos} or lawyer. Four of his epigrams are on works of art, one is a description of an imperial villa on the coast near Constantinople, and the other two are in praise of Longinus, prefect of Constantinople under Justinian. One of the last is referred to in an epigram by Macedonius (/Anth. Pal./ x. 380).

JOANNES BARBUCALLUS, also called JOANNES GRAMMATICUS, is the author of eleven epigrams in the Anthology. Three of them are on the destruction of Berytus by earthquake in A.D. 551: from these it may be conjectured that he had studied at the great school of civil law there. As to his name a scholiast in MS. Pal. says, {ethnikon estin enoma. Barboukale gar polis en tois [entos] Iberos tou potamou}. But this seems to be an incorrect reminiscence of the name {Arboukale}, a town in Hispania Tarraconensis, in the lexicon of Stepha.n.u.s Byzantinus.

JULIa.n.u.s, commonly called JULIa.n.u.s AEGYPTIUS, is the author of seventy epigrams (and two more doubtful) in the Anthology. His full t.i.tle is {apo uparkhon Aiguptou}, or ex-prefect of a division of Egypt, the same office which Lucian had held under Commodus. His date is fixed by two epitaphs on Hypatius, brother of the Emperor Anastasius, who was put to death by Justinian in A.D. 532.

LEONTIUS, called Scholasticus, author of twenty-four epigrams in the Anthology, is generally identified with a Leontius Referendarius, mentioned by Procopius under this reign. The Referendarii were a board of high officials, who, according to the commentator on the /Not.i.tia imperii/, transmitted pet.i.tions and cases referred from the lower courts to the Emperor, and issued his decisions upon them. Under Justinian they were eighteen in number, and were /spectabiles/, their president being a /comes/. One of the epigrams of Leontius is on Gabriel, prefect of Constantinople under Justinian; another is on the famous charioteer Porphyrius. Most of them are on works of art.

MACEDONIUS of Thessalonica, mentioned by Suidas s.v. {Agathias} as consul in the reign of Justinian, is the author of forty-four epigrams in the Anthology, the best of which are some delicate and fanciful amatory pieces.

PAULUS, always spoken of with his official t.i.tle of SILENTIARIUS, author of seventy-nine epigrams (and six others doubtful) in the Anthology, is the most distinguished poet of this period. Our knowledge of him is chiefly derived from Agathias, /Hist./ v. 9, who says he was of high birth and great wealth, and head of the thirty Silentiarii, or Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, who were among the highest functionaries of the Byzantine court. Two of his epigrams are replies to two others by Agathias (/Anth. Pal./ v. 292, 293; 299, 300); another is on the death of Damocharis of Cos, Agathias'

favourite pupil, lamenting with almost literal truth that the harp of the Muses would thenceforth be silent. Besides the epigrams, we possess a long description of the church of Saint Sophia by him, partly in iambics and partly in hexameters, and a poem in dimeter iambics on the hot springs of Pythia. The "grace and genius beyond his age," which Jacobs justly attributes to him, reach their highest point in his amatory epigrams, forty in number, some of which are not inferior to those of Meleager.

RUFINUS, author of thirty-nine (and three more doubtful) amatory epigrams in the Palatine Anthology, is no doubt of the same period. In the heading of one of the epigrams he is called Rufinus Domesticus.

The exact nature of his public office cannot be determined from this t.i.tle. A Domestic was at the head of each of the chief departments of the imperial service, and was a high official. But the name was also given to the Emperor's Horse and Foot Guards, and to the bodyguards of the prefects in charge of provinces, cities, or armies.

ERATOSTHENES, called Scholasticus, is the author of five epigrams in the Palatine Anthology. Epigrams by Julia.n.u.s, Macedonius, and Paulus Silentiarius, are ascribed to him in other MSS., and from this fact, as well as from the evidence of the style, he may be confidently placed under the same date. Nothing further is known of him. Probably to the same period belongs THEOPHANES, author of two epigrams in the miscellaneous appendix (xv.) to the Palatine Anthology, one of them in answer to an epigram by Constantinus Siculus, as to whose date there is the same uncertainty. Two epitaphs in the Anthology are also ascribed to Theophanes in Planudes.

With this brief latter summer the history of Greek poetry practically ends. The epigrams of Damocharis, the pupil of Agathias, seem already to show the decomposition of the art. The imposing fabric of empire reconstructed by the genius of Justinian and his ministers had no solidity, and was crumbling away even before the death of its founder: while the great plague, beginning in the fifteenth year of Justinian, continued for no less than fifty-two years to ravage every province of the empire and depopulate whole cities and provinces. In such a period as this the fragile and exotic poetry of the Byzantine Renaissance could not sustain itself. Political and theological epigrams continued to be written in profusion; but the collections may be searched through in vain for a single touch of imagination or beauty. Under Constantine VII. (reigned A.D. 911-959) comes the last shadowy name in the Anthology.

COMETAS, called Chartularius or Keeper of the Records, is the author of six epigrams in the Palatine Anthology, besides a poem in hexameters on the Raising of Lazarus. From some marginal notes in the MS. it appears that he was a contemporary of Constantinus Cephalas.

Three of the epigrams are on a revised text of Homer which he edited.

None are of any literary value, except one beautiful pastoral couplet, vi. 10 in this selection, which seems to be the very voice of ancient poetry bidding the world a lingering and reluctant farewell.