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The Cycle of Agathias: New Identifications Scrutinised

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

R. C. McCail
Affiliation:
The University, Edinburgh.

Extract

The Cycle of sixth-century epigrams edited by Agathias Scholasticus is the subject of a recent article by Mr and Mrs A. Cameron (JHS lxxxvi [1966] 6 ff.), who argue cogently that it was published in the early years of Justin II, and not the later years of Justinian, as has hitherto been supposed. Ca. also suggest identifications for many of the poets and imperial officials who figure in the Cycle. They do not, however, exhaust all the identifications that can be made, and some of those suggested by them require amplification or correction. Furthermore, Ca.'s view of the dating of the Cycle leads them, it seems to me, to underestimate its Justinianic character. The following observations are offered without prejudice to the merit of Ca.'s article as a whole.

Among the Cyclic poets, only Julian the ex-Prefect of the East stands in close relationship to the political life of the age. His involvement in the Nika insurrection of 532 is attested by historical sources and, as Ca. claim (13), by two epigrams of the Anthology. The latter, however, contain difficulties passed over by Ca. In the first place, of the two epigrams on the cenotaph of Hypatius, only AP vii 591 is certainly from Julian's pen; vii 592 is unattributed in the Palatine MS., a fact which Ca. omit to mention. (It is absent from the Planudean MS.) The state of affairs in P is no accident, vii 591, though eulogising the dead man and alluding openly to the casting of his corpse into the sea, is moderate in tone, and would have caused no more offence to Justinian than Procopius's published account of the affair.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1969

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References

1 Vide Jacobs, Dübner, Stadtmueller and Waltz ad loc.

2 Reading in the latter, with Brunck, for Planudes's Cf. also Beckby. The striking phrase for ‘after the renovation of the library’ resembles Julian's ‘after your arrow-shot’ in AP xvi 88.5. On this view, the Julian who was urban prefect under Zeno (AP xvi 69) would be a different person.

3 Joh. Lyd. De Mag. iii 72 ff., BE ii 456, RE xx 1.449 (Ensslin).

4 Joh. Eph. ii p. 481 Nau. I assume that the earlier and later Phocas are identical, cf. BE ii 371; Bury, , History of the Later Roman Empire ii (1923) 55 n. 2, 368.Google ScholarContra Ensslin in RE xx 1.450.

5 Cf. Ensslin 449.

6 As a rough chronology I propose: Craterus c. 460–c. 495, Julian c. 475–c. 550, Phocas c. 490–545/6. The present tense ἄρδομαι in ix 661.6 indicates that Julian had attended Craterus's lectures.

7 vii 561, 562, 565, 576, 603, 605. C writes ἀπὸ ὑπάρχων once, at f. 241 marg. infer. On the dating and priority of these hands vide Preisendanz, , Anthologia Palatina, Codex Palatinus et Codex Parisinus phototypice editi (Lugd. Batav., 1911) I xxvi ff.Google Scholar, xxxii al. On J as scribe, ibid. lxxv, lxxix.

8 Cedrenus i p. 637 Bonn puts this in the reign of Justin I.

9 So Florus, who in Nov. xxii 536 (ex.) is comes rerum privatarum and ex-consul, having been previously styled com. rer. priv. and/or curator dominicae domus, vide CJ loc. cit., 531, Nov. xii 535, CJ xii 33.8 and Nov. cliv, both n.d. Magnus in IGLS 528. Anatolius in Agathias, Hist. v 3, 557.Google Scholar

10 Jahreshefte des österreichhchen archäologischen Institutes xliv (1959) Beibl. col. 348–9, Abb. 189–90.

11 Cf. Inan, J. and Rosenbaum, E., Roman and Early Byzantine Portrait Sculpture in Asia Minor (London 1966) nos. 201–2 (pp. 156–8)Google Scholar, pls. clxxviii 4, clxxxiv 2, clxxxvi 4–5. No. 202 is dated by Oberleitner, W. in Jahreshefte 86 ff.Google Scholar

12 I am grateful to Messrs. A. G. Woodhead and J. G. Beckwith for answering my inquiries about the Damocharis inscription and statue.

13 Ca. (19) date Agathias's birth to c. 531–2, for which I have argued in Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies viii (1967) 241 ff. They date the publication of the Cycle to not much later than 568, cf. p. 24 of their article.

14 Planudes left a blank space at the end of line 3, which another hand has filled with Ἀγαρηνῶν. Cod. Britannicus Add. 16409, a contemporary apograph of the Planudean MS., has Σαρακηνῶν; its copyist presumably found this reading in the exemplar from which Planudes copied, since he elsewhere transmits readings and items which Planudes first wrote and then expunged in his autograph, (On the British Museum apograph cf. Young, D. C. C. in Scriptorium vii [1953] 8 f.Google Scholar; id. in Parola del Passato x [1955] 197 ff.) Both Σαρακηνοί and Ἀγαρηνοί were used to denote the nomad peoples of the desert hinterland from Mesopotamia to Arabia. Σαρακηνοί occurs passim in sixth-century writers, e.g. Procopius and Menander Protector. Ἀγαρηνοί, though Biblical (I Chr. v 19, Ps. 83.6; cf. Apolinarius, Metaphrasis p. 173.1Google ScholarLüdwich, , Euseb. in Hieron. Chron. p. 24aGoogle ScholarHelm, , Chron. Pasch. i 94.20Google Scholar), seems not to have been used at all frequently for ‘Arabs’ until a later period, and even then tends to be replaced in MSS. by Σαρακηνοί, cf. Theophanes i 385.15 and 399.6 De Boor. I retain Ἀγαρηνῶν as the lectio difficilior, and because of its use by Apolinarius at the end of an epic hexameter, as here.

15 For Δύσις meaning ‘the Western empire’ in writers of the fourth and fifth centuries, vide Lampe, Patristic Lexicon s.v. So in the epitaph of Isaac, Exarch of Ravenna 625–43 (Anlhologia Palatina (Didot) iii 2.734 f.). It is perhaps surprising to find so general a word as Δύσις alongside the more particular eastern locations. But it takes up less space in the enumeration than would have Ἑσπερίη, Αὐσονίη, etc., and the vagueness would not have troubled Arabius's contemporaries, to whom the West was terra incognita. Compare the ignorance of Agathias in Hist. i–ii.

16 Vide Stein, , Studien zur Geschichte des byzantinischen Reiches 15, 34 n.Google Scholar; Hartmann, , Untersuch. zur Geschichte der byzantinischen Verwaltung in Italien 7, 145 n.Google Scholar; Ca. 24.

17 Vide Stein, , Studien 15Google Scholar; Diehl, , L'Exarchat de Ravenne 8 n. 7.Google Scholar Between Antiochus, 552–4, and Longinus there is only one ascertainable Prefect of Italy, Pamphronius c. 557, vide Ensslin, in RE xxii 2, 2501Google Scholar; Grumel, , La Chronologie 371Google Scholar; Stein, , Studien 106.Google Scholar Narses' title was not Praefectus, vide BE ii 599 n. 4; Hartmann, , Unters. 6, 108. n.Google Scholar

18 Mal. 482, 542 A.D. cf. Proc. Aed. i 11.10 ff.; Janin, R., Constantinople Byzantine (1964) 208 f.Google Scholar

19 IGLS nos. 348 (550–1) and 349; Proc. Aed. ii 11.1; Lucas in BZ loc. cit. On the relationship between the older and younger Isidorus, vide Proc. Aed. ii 8.25, BE ii 457. The younger Isidorus built many fortifications on the Euphrates frontier, vide Proc. Aed. loc. cit.; no doubt Longinus was associated with him there also.

20 Vide Proc. An. 28.1 ff., soon after 535. Bessas was an active magister militum when past seventy, vide BE ii 507. Athanasius was already old when he was appointed Prefect of Africa and joined the expedition of Areobindus in 544, vide BE ii 553 n. Ten years after this Justinian sent him to Lazica to enquire into the murder of Gubazes (555), vide Agathias Hist. iii 14; BE ii 514.

21 It is to be noted that κηρόν in the former of these two epigrams refers not to a death-mask, as Ca. say (10), but to a funerary portrait in encaustic. Cf. Page, D. L., Literary Papyri p. 556.16, 20Google Scholar; Mathew, Gervase, Byzantine Aesthetics 75.Google Scholar Agathias alludes to funerary portraits in AP iv 4.8 and vii 589.8. For κηρός of encaustic painting generally, cf. AP i 34.2, xvi 80.6, ibid. 244.5 (all Agathias), ix 591.5 (anon.), xvi 141.6 (Phil. Thess.), ibid. 327.1 (Joh. Barbue). For τύπος applied to two-dimensional representations, vide Stephanus and LSJ Suppl. s.v. With reference to the Agathian epigram vii 602, the elder Eustathius was probably Augustal Prefect of Egypt in 501, before becoming Praetorian Prefect vide Eutych. Alex. in PG cxi 1062; Cantarelli, , La Serie dei Prefetti di Egitto pt. iii 410.Google Scholar He was surely, as Agathias says, quite literally the grandfather (πάππος) of the dead youth in this epigram, παῑς in the lemma being simply a mistake. Contrary to Ca.'s assertion, I see no chronological reason why the elder Eustathius should not have had a grandson who died aged fifteen in the 550's, when Agathias could have written this epigram.

22 Somewhat differently Proc. ibid. 50 (on the comes excubitorum Marcellus) ‘since he could claim to have displayed integrity when in a position of great peril’. Procopius's words about Leontius are effectively glossed by his comment on Marcellus ibid. 23 The difference in emphasis between the two expressions is subtle and intriguing.

23 On Gregory of Campsa cf. lem. vii 327, 334, 429, and Stadtmueller, , AP, vol. II ix f.Google Scholar Gregory was a. school-teacher, and may have taught in the school attached to the New Church at Constantinople, consecrated in A.D. 881. It appears from these scholia and from the heading of AP vii that Gregory, Cephalas, and the redactor J were in some sort contemporary, J having been the pupil of Cephalas.

24 Plate was surely not the island of that name in the Bosphorus, as editors of the Anthology have supposed, but the district of Plateia or Plate at Constantinople, where there was a church of the Archangel Michael, vide Janin, , Cpl. Byzantine (1964) 41, 414.Google Scholar The quarter of the Sosthenium at Constantinople also had a church and monastery of St Michael, ibid. 479; id. Églies et Monastères 359.

25 Contra Ca. in their ‘Further Thoughts’, JHS lxxxvii (1967) 131.

26 Grégoire, , Recueil 100Google Scholarbis is simply our epigram with an approximate version of its lemma, introduced by Grégoire from P. This has also misled Ensslin, RE s.v. Theodorus (111). Similarly, Grégoire's nos. 16 (2), 100 (3) – 100 (5) =AP i 103, 91, 50 95 respectively.

27 Cf. Rouillard, G. in Byzantion ii (1925) 146Google Scholar, who gives other examples of palace officials who went on to hold administrative posts, including those of dux and praeses in the Egyptian provinces. Particularly relevant is the case of a Decurion (yet another Theodorus) who became dux augustalis of the Thebaid, vide Lefèbvre, Recueil des inscriptions grecques-chrétiennes d'Égypte no. 584 (577); Rouillard 141 ff.

28 Of the series AP vii 553–9, in which the epigram of Theodorus occurs, only two epigrams (555 and 555b) are certainly Cyclic. 554 (Phil. Thess.) and 557 (Cyrus the Poet) are non-Cyclic, while doubt attaches to 553 (Damascius Philos.), 558 (anon.) and 559 (Theosebeia). Ca. (8) reckon Theosebeia as Cyclic, but adduce no evidence. Geffcken in RE v A.2.2245, following Jacobs, identified her with Theosebeia, sister of the third-century alchemist Zosimus, who collaborated with her brother on an encyclopaedia of alchemy. See Taylor, F. Sherwood in JHS 1 (1930) 119 f.Google Scholar Learned women were rare enough in antiquity to lend some probability to this identification.

29 The disturbed context of ix 657 somewhat diminishes its value as a criterion of dating; since 655 (aet. Heraclii) and 656 (aet. Anastasii) seem to have been introduced by Cephalas from inscriptions, so, on a rigorous evaluation, might 657.

30 For detailed linguistic and exegetical comment see my Amatory, Christian and Epideictic Epigrams of Agathias Scholasticus, Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1963, unpubl. A complete commentary on the epigrams of Agathias is in preparation.

31 Vide Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, loc. cit. n. 13 supra.

32 Vide Kitzinger, E., ‘The Cult of the Images in the Age before Iconoclasm’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers viii (1954) 139Google Scholar; and my Dissertation on this epigram.