International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

EPIGRAMMATIC POETRY
Chairs: 
Kristoffel Demoen,
Eugenio Amato
Delphine Lauritzen
, 
Echoes of John of Gaza in the Preface of Agathias’ Cycle
Julie Boeten – Sien de Groot
, 
Byzantine Book Epigrams: The Case of 
ὥσπερ ξένοι…
Foteini Spingou
, 
Cultural Memory, Literary Canon(s) and Poetic Anthologies in Later Byzantium
Maria Tziatzi
, 
Bemerkungen zu Gedichten des Georgios Pisides
Ilias Taxidis
, 
“ὡς ἀπὸ Πυθαγόρου φθέγγεται ἢ νεφέων” : 
à l’occasion d’un vers de l’épigramme planudéenne “Εἰς τὴν ὑπόκρισιν”
Demetra Samara
, 
Funerary Epigrams by Manuel Philes for John Cheilas, Metropolitan of Ephesus

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Delphine Lauritzen 
Venice, Italy; 
[e-mail]
Echoes of John of Gaza in the Preface of Agathias’ Cycle
It is possible to detect the influence of John of Gaza’s Description of the Cosmic Panel in the 
preface which Agathias the Scholastic composed for his Cycle (AP IV.3). Most parallels can be seen be-
tween John’s iambic prologues and Agathias’ iambic preface. This proves that Agathias read John’s De-
scription and may indicate further reasons why these poems appear together in the Palatine Anthology.
Julie Boeten 
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium; 
[e-mail]
Sien de Groot
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium; 
[e-mail]
Byzantine Book Epigrams: The Case of ὥσπερ ξένοι…
Greek manuscripts are generally being studied as witnesses of Ancient, Early Christian or 
Byzantine texts. By contrast, the (snippets of) texts found in the margins of these manuscripts have 
received very little scholarly attention. So-called book epigrams are a good example of such little-
explored marginalia. Recently, however, a wealth of material has become publicly – and freely – 
available through the Ghent University 
Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams
, which has sparked off 
further research into this subject.
In this paper we will focus on one particularly popular type of epigram, namely the ὥσπερ
 
ξένοι-case: 
Ὥσπερ ξένοι χαίρουσιν ἰδεῖν πατρίδα·
οὕτως καὶ οἱ γράφοντες βιβλίου τέλος. 
This text can be considered to be the most standard, and thus most often attested, version of 
the epigram (http://www.dbbe.ugent.be/occ/346). However, due to the numerous occurrences of 
this formula throughout more than one hundred Byzantine manuscripts, its diversity in length, 
meter and lexical choice is striking. This presents manifold challenges to the scholar. We will discuss 
two of these challenges, more specifically the editorial issues and the metrical irregularities. 
As with many book epigrams, its edition is highly complicated by the variety in which it has come 
down to us. This specific epigram, however, challenges the concepts of authorship and originality to 
such an extent that it complicates the (re)construction of an authoritative text even further. Producers 
of book epigrams often combined a traditional, formulaic attitude with their own original input, which 
makes every single occurrence of this type of epigram a more or less original text. 

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Secondly, our case study exhibits certain metrical deviations, most notably in the last verse of 
the epigram. The high frequency of metrical irregularities in the ὥσπερ
 
ξένοι-case suggests that it 
was not felt to be problematic to deviate from the dodecasyllabic pattern. We will argue that this is a 
consequence of the ‘commatic’ style of Byzantine meter, which is also typical of Byzantine rhetoric. 
By addressing these two main issues, we will shed light on the indistinct poetic status of book 
epigrams in general.