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Home , Agathias

Lynda Garland

Public Lavatories, Mosquito Nets and Agathias’ Cat: The Sixth- Century Epigram in its Justinianic Context

Down gleaming walls of porcelain flows the sluice That out of sight decants the kidney juice, Thus pleasuring those gents for miles around Who, crying for relief, once piped the sound Of wind in alleyways…

Despite its place at the head of this paper, this is not one of Agathias’ much-deplored poems on the public lavatory at Smyrna,1 but Josiah Feable’s celebratory ode written in 1855 to mark the opening of the first public flush toilets in London, which stood outside the Royal Exchange.2 Whatever the perceptions of Agathias of ’s abilities as a poet – and he was not a “writer of the first rank” in the judgement of Averil Cameron3 – he was assuredly a finer poet in every respect than the Victorian exponent of the divine art, whose name so aptly reflected his abilities. Yet both poets present fascinating vignettes reflecting the society of their own times and this paper will argue that Agathias, along with the other sixth-century epigrammatists, is a veritable mine of information not only about attitudes and tastes in the mid-sixth century, but about the realia of life in the Byzantine capital at the end of the reign of Justinian and in the years following under Justin II. This view runs counter to that normally held regarding the “relevance” of the Byzantine epigram to its social context. But, despite the long-held perception that the sixth-century epigrams in the bear little if any relationship to real life, with the exception, perhaps of some of the descriptions of contemporary art (most notably hippodrome artifacts and the statues of popular charioteers), the enshrining of the details of contemporary life in celebratory verse, whether by sixth or nineteenth-century poets, reflects the very real interests and priorities of their societies. Indeed, Feable’s ode to the first Victorian flushing urinal mirrors that written thirteen centuries earlier by Agathias on his, no doubt, equally welcomed gift of a public lavatory to the city of Smyrna (AP 9.662), the only difference being that Agathias’ production was composed from the point of view of the donor, Feable’s from that of the grateful recipients. There has been much debate about the date of the publication of Agathias’ Cycle. This paper adopts the reasonable and non-contentious view that, while the majority of the poems contained in the Cycle would have been written in the later years of Justinian, publication of the collection probably took place c. AD 567/8, in the early years of the reign of Justin II and Sophia,4 prior to Agathias’ starting his Histories.5 The poems of the anthology relate to

1 Agathias, Anthologia Palatina (AP), 9.642–44, 662; for Agathias’ epigrams, see G. Viansino, Agazia Scolastico, Epigrammi. Testo, traduzione e commento (Milano 1967). 2 R. Humphreys, The Rough Guide to London (New York 2005), 204. Ladies had to wait until 1911 for a public convenience. For attempts to assign Agathias’ “lavatory” poems to other authorship, see A. Cameron, Agathias (Oxford 1970), 2 n. 4; cf. “his (to some) lamentable lapse of taste”: ibid. 3. 3 , Agathias, 1. 4 Note esp. B. Baldwin, “Four Problems in Agathias”, BZ 70 (1977), 295–305, and idem, “The Date of the Cycle of Agathias”, BZ 73 (1980), 334–340 arguing for a primarily Justinianic date of composition against Averil and Alan Cameron, “The Cycle of Agathias”, JHS 86 (1966), 6–25 and

142 Public Lavatories, Mosquito Nets and Agathias’ Cat

Justinian and Justin II fairly equally: there are eight epigrams for each, with Sophia featuring as much as her husband Justin II,6 with many of the inscriptional poems referring to Justin and Sophia as an imperial couple,7 while Theodora is not entirely omitted: she may well be the subject of a poem eulogising the queen who “kindled a light for prudent men and broke up the civil strife caused by the battle-loving factions” (a reference to the Nika riot), as well as of a portrait described by which he thought failed to do her justice.8 And so, in this collection, the celebration of imperium is clearly an important component. Therefore, early in the reign of Justin II and Sophia, Agathias collected some 100 of his own epigrams and those written by his friends during the last few years and published them as the Cycle. While some of the sixth-century inscriptional poems by the same poets found in the Greek Anthology presumably entered the anthology not via the Cycle but from non- literary sources, Agathias stresses in his preface that he is including recent epitaphs by his contemporaries, as well as epigrams on statues and other works of art, and therefore inscriptional works are an important component of this collection.9 Agathias also tells us that he is explicitly focusing on recently composed epigrams: in his proem he speaks of serving up a meal “to which many new flavourings contribute”,10 which he enlarges upon, in his Histories, by stating that he had made “as complete a collection as possible of those recent and contemporary epigrams which were as yet unknown and casually murmured on the lips of some, and had written them down appropriately classified and arranged”.11 In other words, the Cycle consisted of recently composed epigrams, known only to a cultured elite and now presented to a wider reading public. Furthermore, the lemma to his dedication for the collection (AP 4.3), which explicitly presupposes an audience, comments: “the proems (or preludes) were spoken as part of the frequent recitations given at that time”, clearly implying that there had been public performance of these pieces, as well as circulation of a written text. Agathias’ proem to his collection specifically states that he had been selective and that he was not intending to include all the works of his contemporaries: “I introduce a small portion from each poet just as a taste: but for the rest if anyone should wish to encounter all of them and have his fill, he must go and search in the market.”12 In other words, the Cycle is a selective anthology of recent works by Agathias’ colleagues in mid sixth-century , as well as by Agathias himself, for he modestly remarks

“Further Thoughts on the ‘Cycle’ of Agathias,” JHS 87 (1967), 131; cf. R.C. McCail, “The Cycle of Agathias; new identifications scrutinised”, JHS 89 (1969), 87–96; and see Averil Cameron, “Notes on the Sophiae, the Sophianae and the Harbour of Sophia”, Byzantion 37 (1967), 11–20. 5 Agathias, Histories, ed. B.G. Niebuhr (CSHB: Bonn 1828), pref. 21, cf. 11. 6 Justinian: AP 1.8, 9.1, 9.7–8, 9.811, 9.820, 16.62–3; Justin: 1.2–3, 9.657, 9.658, 9.779, 9.804, 9.810, 9.812, 16.72; Sophia: 2.2, 9.779, 803, 810, 813. 7 AP 1.2–3 (Church of the Theotokos at Blachernae), 1.11 (Sts Cosmas and Damian), 9.779 (sundial in the arch of the Basilica), 9.803–4, 810, 812–3, 16.64 (statues of the couple), 9.657 (the Sophianae palace), 9.658 (the Praetorium); for Sophia and her role in government, see esp. Averil Cameron, “The Empress Sophia”, Byzantion 45 (1975), 5–21, esp. 8–16; L. Garland, Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium AD 527–1204 (London 1999), 40–57. 8 AP 16.44 (anon), 16.77–8 (Paul); cf. works in honour of Anicia Juliana’s foundations: AP 1.10, 12, 13–17. 9 AP 4.3.118–23. 10 AP 4.3.19–20. 11 Histories, pref. 8. 12 AP 4.3.38–41.