94 Part One: Texts and Contexts
could thus be presented as a spiritual pilgrim? The collection of distichs at
API, 37–89 comprises an epigram cycle dating from c. 600: nos. 37–49 and 52–
77, to which Cephalas added various late antique and Byzantine epigrams (nos.
50–51 and 78–89)^37. Other epigrams in AP I cannot be dated, such as nos. 104
and 108: probably early Byzantine, but possibly written after 600. Generally,
a certain chronological order may be detected in the arrangement of the
epigrams. Book AP I has a tripartite structure: 1–36, 37–89 and 90–123,
designed to create a mirror effect whereby beginning and end appear to corre-
spond, with the collection of distichs at AP I, 37–89 in the middle. The first and
the last parts contain a mixture of verse inscriptions and literary epigrams, but
whereas the first 36 epigrams date from late antiquity (with the noteworthy
exception of AP I, 1), most of the epigrams at the end of AP I were written
after c. 600.
Since the spheres of the sacred and the profane intermingle in Byzantium
and since God is never far away from the everyday experience of the Byzan-
tines, the notion of a “Christian” epigram is in itself utterly unchristian, for it
presupposes that there may exist another conceptual world lying beyond the
horizons of Christendom. It is for this reason that Byzantine authors hardly
ever specify that their literary works should be viewed as the products of a
typically Christian ideology. Seen from the perspective of ninth-century
Byzantium, the question whether a contemporary epigram is “Christian” or
not is totally irrelevant. Of course, there had once been a world that had not
known the blessings of Christianity, but was infested with uncanny supersti-
tions, pagan cults and lascivious fantasies. That was the world of the Hellenes,
about whom the Byzantines learnt at school. Although classical schooling was
valued highly in ninth-century Byzantium, if only because it secured social
prestige by distinguishing the man of letters from his less educated peers, there
was still a psychological barrier to be crossed: a mental watershed between
Byzantium and Hellenism, between “us” and “them”. Only in opposition to
what is viewed as alien, not “ours”, does the definition of a Christian epigram
assume relevance, but since no Byzantine scholar before Cephalas seems to
have given much thought to the problem, he had some difficulties in demarcat-
ing and outlining the domain of what constitutes a proper Christian epigram.
Most of the epigrams in AP I deal with churches, religious images and arte-
facts; the remaining are personal prayers, dogmatic poems and book epigrams
on Christian literary works. Though there can be little doubt that these epi-
grams are rightly labelled “Christian”, Cephalas was not as consistent as one
perhaps would have liked, for in AP IXb, the section dealing with works of art,
we find a number of epigrams that are clearly Christian and should therefore
(^37) See Appendix X, pp. 357–361.