Gnomic Epigrams 243of cemeteries and protreptic verses inscribed on the entrances to the church
and the altar space (see below). Secondly, as I stated on pp. 65–66, the poetry
book of Pisides is neatly divided into two: “epigrams” first and “poems” at the
end. Since we find a moralizing maxim on the malicious power of Envy (St. 28)
among the “epigrams”^4 , it is beyond any doubt that either Pisides himself or
an anonymous editor responsible for Pisides’ poetry book considered gnomae to
be epigrams. And thirdly, as I explained in chapter 4, only a few of the various
types of epigrammatic poetry practised by the ancients survived after c. 600:
epigrams on works of art, book epigrams, epitaphs and gnomic epigrams.
Seeing that the literary tradition of the gnomic epigram continued without
interruption, it makes no sense to put different labels on the gnomae of Palladas
and the gnomae of Kassia. One of her gnomic epigrams (I persist in using the
term) almost literally plagiarizes a famous epigram by Palladas, which can be
found in many Byzantine sources, such as the gnomology of Georgides^5. If
Palladas’ epigram is rightly called a “gnomic epigram”, why should we not use
the same term for Kassia’s imitation of this very same text?
**
*
Memento Mori
In the catalogue of the 1997 exhibition in Thessalonica, Treasures of the
Holy Mountain, one finds a picture of a beautiful peacock clutching an almost
rectangular orb from which acanthus leaves shoot forth. It is a marble slab,
probably dating from the late tenth century, and now immured in the exterior
wall of the monastery of Xeropotamos. The relief has a verse inscription along
the bottom: mn8mh qan1toy crhsime7ei t/ b5ù, “the thought of death is useful to
life”^6. The concept of mneme thanatou was a key element in the philosophy of
Byzantine monastic authors, such as John Klimax, who in his Heavenly Ladder
devoted a whole chapter to the subject, and who even defined the monk as “a
soul in great pain, contemplating death with unremitting attention, whether
(^4) Pisides’ gnomic epigram is imitated by Kassia: ed. KRUMBACHER 1897a: 359 (A 40–42).
(^5) Ed. KRUMBACHER 1897a: 359 (A 71–73); cf. Palladas, AP X, 73. For the Byzantine
sources, other than the Greek Anthology, see BOISSONADE 1829–33: II, 475 (where
Palladas’ epigram is attributed to Basil the Great), F. CUMONT, Revue de Philologie, n.s.,
16 (1892) 161–166 (ascription to Emperor Julian), and version D of the gnomology of
Georgides, ed. ODORICO 1986: 266.
(^6) For the marble slab and its inscription, see below, Appendix VIII: no. 97. The epigram
is erroneously attributed to Kassia by TRIPOLITIS 1992: 138 (line 3); see ROCHOW 1967: 63.