Agathias the Scholastic Epigrams in Greek

The Epigrams of Agathias Scholasticus constitute a significant collection of short Greek poems from the 6th-century Byzantine world. Agathias, a lawyer and historian from Myrina in Asia Minor, composed these works in refined elegiac couplets as part of a larger literary endeavor. Around 567–568 CE, he compiled the Cycle of New Epigrams, an anthology designed to rejuvenate the classical tradition of epigrammatic poetry by featuring works from his own circle of contemporary poets alongside his own. The poems embrace conventional Hellenistic themes, treating subjects such as love, friendship, satire, and observations on art and daily life. A notable portion are descriptive, offering valuable, vivid depictions of contemporary architecture and artworks, including the newly constructed church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The collection is widely regarded by modern scholarship as a conscious cultural statement, an assertion by educated professionals like Agathias of the enduring relevance and vitality of classical Greek paideia within the Christian framework of the Byzantine Empire, a project undertaken even as the empire confronted considerable military and political pressures. The original Cycle was organized thematically into seven books, but this structure has not survived. Agathias’s contribution is preserved only through its later incorporation into the monumental Byzantine compilation known as the Greek Anthology; his 108 extant epigrams are now dispersed across various sections of that later anthology.