Anthologies and Anthologists 111this in his heart and sees it in pictures? For as God He prevails over us, but as
Man He does not”^87. The poem is strongly anti-Semitic, but by the sudden
twist at the end it becomes clear that arrogant Christians are in no way better
than the Jews who jeered at Christ. When the viewer looks at the awesome
mystery of the Son of God dying on the cross, his attitude should be one of
humility. It is not clear whether Anastasios had a particular picture in mind
when he wrote the poem, but the word gymnöß indicates that he was thinking of
contemporary representations of the Crucifixion, in which Christ was seen
wearing a loincloth instead of the earlier colobium. Anastasios’ poem is full of
Homeric reminiscences, but where the similar experiment by Kometas failed,
Anastasios succeeds in getting his poetic message across. The hexameters are
almost flawless except for one or two venial slips. Homer is not the only source
of inspiration, for Anastasios uses the Sophoclean word l7gdhn (“in sobs”), the
Hellenistic adjective dival6oß, the rare form kirn1menoß, the poetic Örwmenoß
and the hapax aWmatoc1rmhß. The poem is all in all a splendid example of a
Christian theme treated in a classicizing manner.
AP XV, 29–31 are three epitaphs in elegiacs by Ignatios the Deacon, the
well-known author of the first half of the ninth century^88. In its detailed entry
on Ignatios the Deacon and his various literary works, the Souda mentions the
following category: ™pitymb5oyß ™l6goyß^89. The three epitaphs preserved in the
Palatine Anthology belong to this category, but there can be but little doubt
that the category comprised more than the three specimens still extant. The
Souda clearly refers to a collection of epitaphs – a collection now lost, but still
available to the person who compiled AP XV, 28–40^90. Ignatios may have
conceived the idea of producing a collective edition of his epitaphs by analogy
with the similar collection of Gregory of Nazianzos’ ™pit7mbia ™pigr1mmata. The
latter seems to have been quite popular in the middle Byzantine period, given
the number of early manuscripts containing sepulchral epigrams by Gregory of
Nazianzos: the Palatine manuscript (twice: AP VIII and the collection copied
by J on the last pages), Bodl. Clark. 12 (s. X), Laur. VII 10 (s. XI) and Ambros.
(^87) In the last verse I follow the interpretation of P.T. BRANNAN, American Journal of
Philology 80 (1959) 396–399.
(^88) For the life and works of Ignatios, see WOLSKA-CONUS 1970: 330–351, MANGO 1997: 1–24,
MAKRIS 1997: 3–22, LAUXTERMANN 1998a: 397–401, S. EFTHYMIADIS, The Life of the
Patriarch Tarasios by Ignatios the Deacon. Introduction, Text, Translation and Com-
mentary. Aldershot 1998, 38–46, KAZHDAN 1999: 343–348, and TH. PRATSCH, BMGS 24
(2000) 82–101.
(^89) Ed. ADLER 1928–1938: II, 607–608.
(^90) Perhaps the collection of epitaphs was headed by Ignatios’ funerary anacreontic (ed.
CICCOLELLA 2000a: 42–54); cf. Constantine the Sicilian’s sylloge of pederastic epigrams
(PCP), which also begins with an anacreontic.