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Eratosthenes Scholasticus |
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Section of the biographies of the epigrammatists 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
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.
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Biographies of the Epigrammatists - Eratosthenes Scholasticus
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