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Marianus |
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Section on the Byzantine Period of Greek literary history from The Greek Anthology.
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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
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.
• Return to Biographies of the Epigrammatists - Period of the Byzantine Empire
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