270 Part Two: Epigrams in Context
the icons in her youth, but assumed a more moderate stance in the 820s. She
founded a monastery during the iconoclast reign of Theophilos. She wrote
many hymns and a number of gnomic epigrams. So much for the life of Kassia.
Everything else is speculation. Fact number two: we should question the
manuscript tradition. Not all epigrams that go under her name are hers. The
problem is that we do not know which epigrams are hers and which are not. Let
us not take for granted the ascription of certain epigrams to Kassia. For
instance, rather than thinking of feminine self-hatred, we should consider
whether the misogynist epigrams attributed to her (C 43–62) may have been
written by a male author pretending to be Kassia. Fact number three: Kassia
was a nun and practically everything gnomological in the middle Byzantine
period was composed by monks for monks. What we find in Kassia and other
gnomologies is monastic wisdom. The sources used by Kassia and other gnomic
authors are sometimes monastic, sometimes biblical or patristic, and some-
times profane. But what Kassia and other authors try to do is to christianize
the whole lot and turn it into something compatible with the ethical codes of
Byzantine monasticism. And fact number four: despite the monastic prove-
nance of most gnomologies, including Kassia’s, it is reasonable to assume that
these sources of monastic wisdom also appealed to ordinary Byzantines living
outside the cloister. But these laics will have interpreted Kassia’s gnomic
epigrams in a different way than the nuns for whom she wrote her poetry. The
concept of friendship, for instance, does not bear the same meaning for laics as
it does for monks: the former think in terms of larger social networks, the latter
look upon friendship from the viewpoint of their secluded environment. Since
the interpretation of Kassia’s epigrams is a matter of societal context, we need
to address the question of readership when we try to interpret her poetry.