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The Epigrams of Sophronius*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Five epigrams in the Greek Anthology are ascribed to Sophronius, sophist, poet, theologian and finally patriarch of Jerusalem when it fell to the Arabs in 638. Sophronius' other extant poems are all in the anacreontic metre, which he wrote with a certain fluency but (judged by classical standards) without perfect mastery. It is in principle quite possible that he also composed in so traditional a genre as the classicizing epigram, but (as we shall see) there are in fact considerable doubts about four of the five in question.
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References
1 The identity of sophist and patriarch may now be regarded as settled: for this and all other biographical details seevon Schörnborn, Christoph, Sophrone de Jerusalem: vie monastique et confession dogmatique (Paris, 1972), pp. 53–95 and 39–42Google Scholar(hereafter, Schörnborn), with Chadwick, Henry, ‘John Moschus and his friend Sophronius the sophist’, JTS n.s. 25 (1974), 41–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Schörnborn gives a full inventory of the works attributed to Sophronius (of which many are spurious); at p. 108, following editors of the Anthology, he lists the epigrams without comment.
2 To be read now in the edition by Gigante, M., Sophronii Anacreontica (Rome, 1957)Google Scholar, with a useful appendix of testimonia de anacreonteis and index verborum.
3 For the βαιόν motif in late epigrams, see Porphyrius the Charioteer (Oxford, 1973), p. 92Google Scholar.
4 70, PG 87. 3. 3663 f., or pp. 394–400 in the new edition by Marcos, Natalio Fernández, Los Thaumata de Sofronio: contribución al estudio de la incubatio cristiana (Madrid, 1975)Google Scholar.
5 For bibliography and description of this MS (which is of the late tenth century, not thirteenth, as Mai thought), see Fernández, pp. 232–5.
6 § 70. 7, ὡς οὐδεμίαν ἔχοι πρ⋯ς ⋯νθρώπων βοήθειαν…
7 § 70. 4.
8 Conceivably an intelligent guess (Sophronius wrote the Mir. c. 610 when about 60), though who but the author would have thought to mention such a detail?
9 Spicilegium Romanum (Rome, 1846), pp. 95–6Google Scholar.
10 PG 87. 3. 3421–2.
11 Los Thaumata de Sofronio, pp. 6–7. I am most grateful to Professor Fernández for supplying me with an accurate collation of V for the two epigrams.
12 ‘Coniectanea’ II, Rhein. Museum (1882), 329–30.
13 See the index verborum in A. Scheindler's edition: here too there is a tendency for MSS to offer the more familiar ἱερο-form.
14 See Gigante, , Sophronii Anacreontica, pp. 16–20Google Scholar.
15 Ed. Usener, H., Rhein. Museum (1886), pp. 506. 14; 507. 21; 513. 6Google Scholar. Usener twice prints θεηδόχος against the older MS and Sophronius' usage.
16 Rasche, G., ‘De Anthologiae Graecae epigrammatis quae colloquii formam habent’, Diss. Münister, 1910Google Scholar.
17 On Agathias' metrical practice see Mattsson, A., Untersuchungen zur Epigrammsammlung des Agathias’, Diss. Lund, 1942, pp. 160–71Google Scholar. He does not comment on λιτ⋯ δ⋯ σοι κα⋯ δεîπνα, which seems to be a pointed ‘correction’ of the one and only false quantity in all 20,000 lines of Nonnus' Dionysiaca, ⋯γρονόμων λĭτ⋯ δεîπνα (17. 59). For all their unreality to the Byzantine ear, Agathias seems still to have taken the traditional classical quantities very seriously.
18 For the μετ⋯ τέρμα formula see Athenaeum 45 (1967), 144Google Scholar.
19 Schörnborn, pp. 65 f.
20 The extent of Moschus' contribution is uncertain, depending on whether he died before (Schörnborn, pp. 105–6) or (more probably) after John the Almsgiver (Chadwick, pp. 51–3).
21 Anal. Boll. 40 (1927), 5–74Google Scholar; cf. Schörnborn, p. 106, and the notes to the translation in Baynes, N. H. and Dawes, E., Three Byzantine Saints (London, 1948), pp. 195 fGoogle Scholar. Another conflation has been published by Lappa-Zizicas, E. (Anal. Boll. 88 (1970), 265–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar); a longer text of Leontius' Life by Festugière, A. J. (Paris, 1974)Google Scholar.
22 As suggested by Usener, H. (who did not have the advantage of Delehaye's text), Der Heilige Tychon (Leipzig, 1907), p. 81 n. 2Google Scholar, against Gelzer, H., Leontios von Neapolis Leben des Hl. Johannes des Barmherzigen (Freiburg and Leipzig, 1893), p. 114Google Scholar, who had doubted the ascription of the epigram.
23 See Athenaeum 45 (1967), 145Google Scholar; the classic illustration is the long series of sixth-century charioteer epigrams from statues in the hippodrome of Constantinople (Porphyrius the Charioteer, ch. iv). The later hands of J and C in AP divide 697 itself into two poems at v. 7, almost certainly wrongly.
24 Schörnborn, p. 164. There are some interesting scraps of evidence in Moschus' Prat. Spir. on Eulogius' other foundations in Alexandria: e.g. Dorothea's church of the Theotokos (§77, PG 87. 2. 2930D) and a martyrium of St Julian (§ 146, 3012A).
25 PG 89. 1428A.
26 Mansi, J. D., Sacrorum Conciliorum…Collectio X. 896 BCGoogle Scholar.
27 Defined as religious poetry in four-line stanzas with regulated accents and intercalation of the so-called ‘cucullion’ every three or four stanzas - and acrostich. It is high time that a comprehensive corpus and study of Byzantine anacreontic poetry (secular and religious) was undertaken. Gigante's edition of Sophronius is a first step; for the rest there is much of value in T. Nissen, Die byzantinischen Anakreonteen (Sitzungsber. der Bay. Akad. der Wissenschaften, Philos.-hist. Abt. 1940, Heft 3).
Postscript: on the question of the identification of sophist and patriarch (above, n. 1) see now Ševčenko, I., La civiltà bizanlina dal IV al IX secolo (Bari, 1977), 137Google Scholar f .
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