152 Part Two: Epigrams in Context
equipped with a lemma noting its provenance and does not contain any inter-
nal clues, such as verbs of perception and adverbs of place, we do not know
whether it is an original verse inscription or simply a literary response to the
visual message of an image or iconographic type. And even if an epigram
expressly tells us to look at a particular scene and imagine the awesome
mysteries revealed in it, we cannot be absolutely certain that we are dealing
with a genuine verse inscription rather than with a literary text that makes
clever use of the usual topoi of the genre. For this is what it is: a genre in its own
right and with its own formal characteristics – a kind of poetry that aims to
express forms of visual imagination and to render in words mental perceptions
of the visible^8.
This genre I call epigrams on works of art. Since we often do not know
whether an epigram on a work of art served as a verse inscription or not, the
term I have chosen is deliberately vague, indicating either an epigram that was
actually inscribed on a specific work of art or a literary poem on the subject of
a certain Byzantine iconographic type. The term is perfectly Byzantine. For in
manuscripts the usual heading attached to an epigram on a work of art is
simply: eœß ... (eœß tën än1stasin, eœß tñn Qzm@n, eœß toáß m ́ m1rtyraß, etc.). The
meaning of the preposition eϧ is ambiguous: it either indicates the subject
matter or the object on which the epigram is to be found^9. For instance, the
lemma eœß tën än1stasin can be interpreted in two totally different ways: the
epigram deals with the subject of the Resurrection of Christ or the epigram is
inscribed on a picture of the Anastasis. As for the two other terms of my
definition, epigram and work of art, I have to confess that neither of the two
is specifically Byzantine. As stated in chapter 1 (pp. 27–30), the term ™p5-
gramma is not much in evidence in Byzantine manuscripts, but when the
word is used, it indicates a close relation between an epigram and the specific
object on which it is found. The generic term “work of art” is never used
because Byzantine lemmatists always specify what the subject of a given
epigram is.
In various scholarly publications, the Byzantine epigrams on works of art
are labelled differently. They are either called “epideictic epigrams”^10 or “ec-
(^8) For epigrams on works of art in Latin, see A. ARNULF, Versus ad picturas. Studien zur
Titulusdichtung als Quellengattung der Kunstgeschichte von der Antike bis zum Hoch-
mittelalter. Berlin 1997. See also C.B. KENDALL, The Allegory of the Church: Roman-
esque Portals and their Verse Inscriptions. Toronto 1998.
(^9) See SPECK 1968: 66–67. Cf. the lemmata attached to AP I, 109–114: eœß tñn naön etc., eœß
tñn aJtön, ™n t/ aJt/ na/, eœß tñn aJtñn naön, ™n t/ aJt/ na/ and ™n t/ aJt/ na/: here eœß
and ™n mean exactly the same thing, namely that the epigrams were inscribed in the
church of the Source.
(^10) See, for instance, GALLI CALDERINI 1987: 119–123 and KAMBYLIS 1994–95: 28 and 31.