96 Part One: Texts and Contexts
not know the name of the poet who wrote AP I, 1, but it is reasonable to
assume that the verse inscription bears out the ideas of the person who com-
missioned it, the patriarch himself. The text of the epigram reads as follows:
“The images that the heretics took down from here, our pious sovereigns
replaced”. As the original sixth-century decoration of the Hagia Sophia did not
include any figural representations, we must conclude that Photios either lied
on purpose or did not care much about historical truth. Whether Photios
rewrote history and distorted the facts intentionally or not, the message of the
verse inscription and the mosaic itself is very clear: iconophily is back in town.
That is, with a considerable delay of some 24 years, for the cult of the icons had
already been restored in 843. The verse inscription emphasizes the orthodoxy
of the reigning emperors by cleverly postponing the word p1lin, so that it
indicates not only that the sovereigns replaced the holy images, but also that
these emperors were pious again, in contrast to the hideous iconoclasts who had
ruled before them. Whereas all other ninth-century epigrams can be found in
the last part of the collection (AP I, 90–123), Cephalas placed the Hagia Sophia
verse inscription right at the beginning. By putting it there, he obviously
intended to make clear from the start that his personal religious views were
above suspicion.
Cephalas must have felt compelled to declare publicly his “orthodoxy” out
of fear that people might think that he sympathized with the unorthodox
contents of his anthology. To compile an anthology of ancient epigrams was in
itself not objectionable, but it had to be done cautiously so as not to arouse
suspicions. In Byzantium the classical heritage is usually approached from the
narrow angle of utilitarianism: that is to say, the study of ancient literature is
a laudable pursuit only if it serves the aim of acquiring stylistic skills necessary
for the composition of Byzantine literary works. It is not so much the content
as the varnish of things old that the Byzantines were supposed to value when
they read Homer, Euripides or Plato. But since form and content are interre-
lated, to involve oneself with the ancients could be quite hazardous. And
indeed, some Byzantine intellectuals, such as Leo the Philosopher and Leo
Choirosphaktes, were accused of indulging in the ambiguous beauty of classical
literature with far too much zeal. Since the ancient gods were dead and no one
believed in them any more, there was no real danger there; but what was
particularly offensive to the Byzantines, were sexually explicit texts. This
explains the cautious tone of Cephalas in the prefaces to the erotic and the
pederastic epigrams. The paederastica in AP XII are introduced as follows:
“What kind of man should I be (...) if I were to conceal the Boyish Muse of
Strato of Sardis, which he used to recite to those about him in sport, taking
personal delight in the diction of the epigrams, not in their meaning. Apply
yourself then to what follows, for ‘in dances’, as the tragic poet says, ‘a chaste
woman will not be corrupted’.” If we are to believe Cephalas, Strato of Sardis