Chapter XII: Life (2)

GAETULICUS, the author of eight epigrams in the Palatine Anthology (vi. 154 and vii. 245 are wrongly ascribed to him), is usually identified with Gn. Lentulus Gaetulicus, legate of Upper Germany, executed on suspicion of conspiracy by Caligula, A.D. 39, and mentioned as a writer of amatory poetry by Martial and Pliny. But the identification is very doubtful, and perhaps he rather belongs to the second century A.D. No precise date is indicated in any of the epigrams.

POMPEIUS, author of two or three epigrams in the Palatine Anthology, also called Pompeius the Younger, is generally identified with M. Pompeius Theophanes, son of Theophanes of Mitylene, the friend of Pompey the Great, and himself a friend of Tiberius, according to Strabo.

To the same period probably belong QUINTUS MAECIUS or MACCIUS, author of twelve epigrams in the Anthology, and MARCUS ARGENTARIUS, perhaps the same with a rhetorician Argentarius mentioned by the elder Seneca, author of thirty-seven epigrams, chiefly amatory and convivial, some of which have much grace and fancy. Others place him in the age of Hadrian.

(2) PHILIPPUS of Thessalonica was the compiler of an Anthology of epigrammatists subsequent to Meleager and is himself the author of seventy-four extant epigrams in the Anthology besides six more dubiously ascribed to him. He wrote epigrams of all sorts, mainly imitated from older writers and showing but little original power or imagination. The latest certain historical allusion in his own work is one to Agrippa's mole at Puteoli, but Antiphilus, who was included in his collection, certainly wrote in the reign of Nero, and probably Philippus was of about the same date. Most of his epigrams being merely rhetorical exercises on stock themes give no clue to his precise period.

ANTIPHILUS of Byzantium, whose date is fixed by his epigram on the restoration of liberty to Rhodes by the emperor Nero, A.D. 53 (Tac. /Ann./ xii. 58), is the author of forty-nine epigrams in the Anthology, besides three doubtful. Among them are some graceful dedications, pastoral epigrams, and sea-pieces. The pretty epitaph on Agricola (/Anth. Pal./ ix. 549) gives no clue to his date, as it certainly is not on the father-in-law of Tacitus, and no other person of the name appears to be mentioned in history.

JULIUS POLYAENUS is the author of a group of three epigrams (/Anth. Pal./ ix. 7-9), which have a high seriousness rare in the work of this period. He has been probably identified with a C. Julius Polyaenus who is known from coins to have been a duumvir of Corinth (Colonia Julia) under Nero. He was a native of Corcyra, to which he retired after a life of much toil and travel, apparently as a merchant. The epigram by Polyaenus of Sardis (/Anth. Pal./ ix. 1), usually referred to the same author, is in a completely different manner.

LUCILIUS, the author of one hundred and twenty-three epigrams in the Palatine Anthology (twenty others are of doubtful authorship) was, as we learn from himself, a grammarian at Rome and a pensioner of Nero. He published two volumes of epigrams, somewhat like those of Martial, in a satiric and hyperbolical style.[1]

NICARCHUS is the author of forty-two epigrams of the same kind as those of Lucilius. Another given under his name (/Anth. Pal./ vii. 159) is of the early Alexandrian period, perhaps by Nicias of Miletus, as the converse mistake is made in the Palatine MS. with regard to xi. 398. A large proportion of his epigrams are directed against doctors. There is nothing to fix the precise part of the century in which he lived.

To some part of this century also belong SECUNDUS of Tarentum and MYRINUS, each the other of four epigrams in the Anthology. Nothing further is known of either.

(3) STRATO of Sardis, the collector of the Anthology called {Mousa Paidike Stratonos} and extant, apparently in an imperfect and mutilated form, as the twelfth section or first appendix of the Palatine Anthology may be placed with tolerable certainty in the reign of Hadrian. Besides his ninety-four epigrams preserved in his own Anthology, five others are attributed to him in the Palatine Anthology, and one more in Planudes.

AMMIANUS is the author of twenty-nine epigrams in the Anthology, all irrisory. One of them (/Anth. Pal./ xi. 226) is imitated from Martial, ix. 30. Another sneers at the neo-Atticism which had become the fashion in Greek prose writing. His date is fixed by an attack on Antonius Polemo, a well-known sophist of the age of Hadrian.

THYMOCLES is only known from his single epigram in Strato's Anthology. It is in the manner of Callimachus and may perhaps be of the Alexandrian period.

To this or an earlier date belongs ARCHIAS of Mitylene, the author of a number of miscellaneous epigrams, chiefly imitated from older writers such as Antipater and Leonidas. Forty-one epigrams in all are attributed on some authority to one Archias or another; most have the name simply; some are headed "Archias the Grammarian," "Archias the Younger," "Archias the Macedonian," "Archias of Byzantium." All are sufficiently like each other in style to be by the same hand. Some have been attributed to Cicero's client, Archias of Antioch, but they seem to be of a later period.

To the age of Hadrian also belongs the epigram inscribed on the Memnon statue at Thebes with the name of its author, ASCLEPIODOTUS, ix. 19 in this selection.

CLAUDIUS PTOLEMAEUS of Alexandria, mathematician, astronomer, and geographer, who gave his name to the Ptolemaïc system of the heavens, flourished in the latter half of the second century. His chief works are the {Megale Suntaxis tes Astronomias} in thirteen books, known to the Middle Ages in its Arabian translation under the title of the /Almagest/, and the {Geographike Uphegesis} in eight books. He also wrote on astrology, chronology, and music. A single epigram of his on his favourite science is preserved in the Anthology. Another commonplace couplet under the name of Ptolemaeus is probably by some different author.

LUCIAN of Samosata in Commagene, perhaps the most important figure in the literature of this period, was born about A.D. 120. He practised as an advocate at Antioch, and travelled very extensively throughout the empire. He was appointed procurator of a district of Egypt by the emperor Commodus (reigned A.D. 180-192) and probably died about A.D. 200. Besides his voluminous prose works he is the author of forty epigrams in the Anthology, and fourteen more are ascribed to him on doubtful or insufficient authority.

To some part of this period appear to belong ALPHEUS of Mitylene, author of twelve epigrams, some school-exercises, others on ancient towns, Mycenae, Argos, Tegea, and Troy, which he appears to have visited as a tourist; CARPYLLIDES or CARPHYLLIDES, author of one fine epitaph and another dull epigram in the moralising vein of this age: GLAUCUS of Nicopolis, author of six epigrams (one is headed "Glaucus of Athens," but is in the same late imperial style; and in this period the citizenship of Athens was sold for a trifle by the authorities to any one who cared for it: cf. the epigram of Automedon (/Anth. Pal./ xi. 319)); and SATYRUS (whose name is also given as Satyrius, Thyïlus, Thyïllus, and Satyrus Thyïllus), author of nine epigrams, chiefly dedications and pastoral pieces, some of them of great delicacy and beauty.

[1] The spelling /Lucillius/ is a mere barbarism, the /l/ being
doubled to indicate the long vowel: so we find {Statullios}, etc.

V. Byzantine period; from the transference of the seat of empire to
Constantinople, A.D. 330, to the formation of the Palatine
Anthology in the reign of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, about the
middle of the tenth century.

For the first two centuries of this period hardly any names have to be chronicled. Literature had almost ceased to exist except among lexicographers and grammarians; and though epigrams, Christian and pagan, continued to be written, they are for the most part of no literary account whatever. One name only of importance meets us before the reign of Justinian.

PALLADAS of Alexandria is the author of one hundred and fifty-one epigrams (besides twenty-three more doubtful) in the Anthology. His somber and melancholy figure is one of the last of the purely pagan world in its losing battle against Christianity. One of the epigrams attributed to him on the authority of Planudes is an eulogy on the celebrated Hypatia, daughter of Theon of Alexandria, whose tragic death took place A.D. 415 in the reign of Theodosius the Second. Another was, according to a scholium in the Palatine MS., written in the reign of Valentinian and Valens, joint-emperors, 364-375 A.D. The epigram on the destruction of Berytus, ix. 27 in this selection, gives no certain argument of date. Palladas was a grammarian by profession. An anonymous epigram (/Anth. Pal./ ix. 380) speaks of him as of high poetical reputation; and, indeed, in those dark ages the harsh and bitter force that underlies his crude thought and half-barbarous language is enough to give him a place of note. Casaubon dismisses him in two contemptuous words as "versificator insulsissimus"; this is true of a great part of his work, and would perhaps be true of it all but for the /saeva indignatio/ which kindles the verse, not into the flame of poetry, but as it were to a dull red heat. There is little direct allusion in his epigrams to the struggle against the new religion. One epigram speaks obscurely of the destruction of the idols of Alexandria by the Christian populace in the archiepiscopate of Theophilus, A.D. 389; another in even more enigmatic language (/Anth. Pal./ x. 90) seems to be a bitter attack on the doctrine of the Resurrection; and a scornful couplet against the swarms of Egyptian monks might have been written by a Reformer of the sixteenth century. For the most part his sympathy with the losing side is only betrayed in his despondency over all things. But it is in his criticism of life that the power of Palladas lies; with a remorselessness like that of Swift he tears the coverings from human frailty and holds it up in its meanness and misery. The lines on the Descent of Man (/Anth. Pal./ x. 45), which unfortunately cannot be included in this selection, fall as heavily on the Neo-Platonic martyr as on the Christian persecutor, and remain even now among the most mordant and crushing sarcasms ever passed upon mankind.

To the same period in thought--beyond this there is no clue to their date--belong AESOPUS and GLYCON, each the author of a single epigram in the Palatine Anthology. They belong to the age of the Byzantine metaphrasts, when infinite pains were taken to rewrite well-known poems or passages in different metres, by turning Homer into elegiacs or iambics, and recasting pieces of Euripides or Menander as epigrams.

A century later comes the Byzantine lawyer, MARIANUS, mentioned by Suidas as having flourished in the reign of Anastasius I., A.D. 491- 518. He turned Theocritus and Apollonius Rhodius into iambics. There are six epigrams of his in the Anthology, all descriptive, on places in the neighbourhood of Constantinople.

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 Stephanus Byzantinus.

JULIANUS, commonly called JULIANUS AEGYPTIUS, is the author of seventy epigrams (and two more doubtful) in the Anthology. His full title 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 /Notitia imperii/, transmitted petitions 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 title 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 title. 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 Julianus, 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.