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Agathias |
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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
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.
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Biographies of the Epigrammatists - Agathias
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