86 Part One: Texts and Contexts
= AP IX, 1–583) from the epigrams on works of art (AP IXb = APl 32–387 +
some epigrams in the syllogae minores and the additions of Sp + AP IX, 584–
822)^9.
**
*
Constantine Cephalas
Little is known about Constantine Cephalas. In sources other than the
Palatine manuscript he is mentioned only once: as protopapas at the Byzantine
court in 917^10. The scholia in the Palatine manuscript unfortunately do not
supply us with much valuable information about his person or his activities,
except for an intriguing note of the Corrector at AP VII, 429: “Cephalas
propounded (proeb1leto) this epigram in the school of the New Church in the
time of Gregory the Headmaster of blessed memory”. The scholion informs us
that Cephalas used to teach at the school of the New Church and that he once
lectured on AP VII, 429, a pröblhma that his students had to solve^11. In the
prooemia attached to AP V–VII, IX–XII and XIV, Cephalas addresses his
students directly every time he introduces a new epigrammatic sub-genre:
“you should know (...)”, “please notice (...)”, “you may find (...)”. The per-
emptory tone and the didactic tenor of these proems leave no doubt that the
anthology of Cephalas came into existence in the context of the Byzantine
educational system. Cephalas was a junior teacher at the school of the New
Church; the headmaster (mag5stzr) was Gregory of Kampsa, whom we know to
have compiled a collection of ancient verse inscriptions, which was incorporat-
ed in the anthology of Cephalas^12. Seeing that the New Church was inaugurated
in 880^13 , the anthology of Cephalas was published at the earliest in the 880s, if
not later. But apparently not much later, for the Sylloge Euphemiana, which
(^9) See LAUXTERMANN 1998c: 526–529.
(^10) See Theoph. Cont., 388–389 and Georg. Cont., 881. Keóal@ß is a nickname and means
“Bighead”, see Georg. Cont., 820.
(^11) See CAMERON 1993: 109–110 and 137. For riddles as part of the Byzantine school
curriculum, see N.G. WILSON, Scholars of Byzantium. London 1983, 23.
(^12) For Gregory of Kampsa and his collection of verse inscriptions, see pp. 72–74. For
information on Byzantine schools and teachers, see LEMERLE 1971: 242–266 and SPECK
1974a: 29–73 (for Cephalas, see esp. p. 61, n. 28).
(^13) For the New Church, see P. MAGDALINO, JÖB 37 (1987) 51–64. The school of the New
Church seems to have existed only for a short while, seeing that the letters of the
Anonymous Professor, dating from 920–940, inform us that the clergy of the New
Church sent their protégés to his school, see LEMERLE 1971: 206, n. 3.