Agathias or Agathias Scholasticus (c. AD 536-582/594), of Myrina, an Aeolian city in western
Asia Minor, was a Greek poet and
the historian who is a principal source for that part of the reign of Justinian I covered in his history.
He studied law at Alexandria, returned to Constantinople in 554 to finish his training and practised as an advocate (scholasticus) in the
courts. Literature, however, was his favourite pursuit.
He wrote a number of short love-poems in epic metre, called Daphniaca. He also put together an anthology of epigrams by
earlier and contemporary poets and himself, under the title of a Cycle of New Epigrams. Agathias re-edited the
Greek Anthology, which preserves about a hundred of his epigrams, showing considerable
taste and elegance. He also wrote marginal notes on the Periegetes of Pausanias.
After the death of Justinian (565), some of Agathias's friends persuaded him to write the history
of his own times. This work in five books, On the Reign of Justinian, continues the history of Procopius, whose style it imitates, and is the chief authority for the period 552-558. It deals chiefly with the struggles of the Byzantine army, under the command
of the eunuch Narses, against the Goths, Vandals, Franks and Persians.
- "His pages abound in philosophic reflection. He is able and reliable, though he gathered his information from eye- witnesses,
and not, as Procopius, in the exercise of high military and political offices. He delights in depicting the manners, customs, and
religion of the foreign peoples of whom he writes; the great disturbances of his time, earthquakes, plagues, famines, attract his
attention, and he does not fail to insert "many incidental notices of cities, forts, and rivers, philosophers, and subordinate
commanders." Many of his facts are not to be found elsewhere, and he has always been looked on as a valuable authority for the
period he describes." —Catholic Encyclopedia.
"The author prides himself on his honesty and impartiality, but he is lacking in judgment and knowledge of facts; the work,
however, is valuable from the importance of the events of which it treats" (Enc. Brit. 1911). Gibbon contrasts
Agathias as "a poet and rhetorician" with Procopius, "a statesman and soldier." Christian commentators note the superficiality of
Agathias' nominal Christianity: "There are reasons for doubting that he was a Christian, though it seems improbable that he could
have been at that late date a genuine pagan." (Catholic Encyclopedia) No overt pagan could expect a public career during
the reign of Justinian, yet the depth and breadth of Agathias' culture was not Christian (Kaldellis).
Agathias (Histories 2.31) is the only authority for the story of Justinian's closing of the re-founded Platonic
(actually neoplatonic) Academy in Athens (529), which is often cited as the closing date of Antiquity. The
dispersed scholars, with as much of their library as could be transported, found temporary refuge in the Persian capital of Ctesiphon, and return— under treaty guarantees of
security that form a document in the history of freedom of thought— to
Edessa, where just a century later the forces of Islam encountered the classical
Greek culture of Antiquity, especially its science and medicine.
Editions of the Histories
- B. Vulcanius (1594)
- Joseph D. Frendo, in Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, vol. 2A, Series Berolinensis, Berlin, 1975
- B.G. Niebuhr for the Corpus SS. Byzant. Bonn, 1828
- P.G., vol. 88, 1248-1608
- Dindorf, Hist. Graeci minores (1871), II, 132-453.
References
- Averil Cameron, Agathias Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. ISBN 0-19-814352-4.
- Anthony Kaldellis, "Things are not what they are: Agathias Mythistoricus and the last laugh of Classical " in Classical
Quarterly, 53 (2003) pp 295-300.
- Kaldellis, "The Historical and Religious Views of Agathias: A Reinterpretation," in Byzantion. Revue internationale des
etudes byzantines, 69 (1999) pp 206-252.
- Kaldellis, "Agathias on history and poetry," in Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 38 (1997), pp 295-306
- W. S. Teuffel, "Agathias von Myrine", Philologus (1846)
- C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (2nd ed. 1897)
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
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