Biographies of the Epigrammatists

Section on the Byzantine Period of Greek literary history from The Greek Anthology.

More of This Feature • Greece before the Persian Wars • Ascendancy of Athens • Alexandrian Monarchies • Greece Under Rome • Byzantine Empire

Related Resources • Primary Texts Index

Famous Women Poets • Anyte • Erinna • Moero • Nossis

Source: Select Epigrams from The Greek Anthology
Edited with a Revised Text, Translation, and Notes, by J. W. Mackail
London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1890

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
• MARIANUS
• AGATHIAS
• ARABIUS
• JOANNES BARBUCALLUS
• JULIANUS AEGYPTIUS
• LEONTIUS SCHOLASTICUS
• MACEDONIUS OF THESSALONICA
• PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
• RUFINUS
• ERATOSTHENES SCHOLASTICUS
• COMETAS

Introduction to the Anthology | Poems