Anthologies and Anthologists 97was not genuinely interested in boys, but wrote his epigrams only to show off
his literary talents “in sport” Implicitly, we are told not to pay attention to
what is said, but rather to how it is said. The preface to AP V tells us how we
are to interpret the erotic epigrams: “Warming the hearts of youth with
learned fervour, I will make Love the beginning of my discourse, for it is Eros
who lights the torch for youth”(AP V, 1). Here the conceptualized figure of
Eros is not unlike the winged creature of Plato guiding the intellectual soul into
the spheres of pure contemplation. Cephalas’ students are admonished not to
think of physical love, but to abstract themselves from profane thoughts by
way of an intellectual process, “learned fervour”. Needless to say, this is pure
hypocrisy. The problem for Cephalas was how to sell his product. Of course, he
could have skipped the “pornographic”epigrams, as did Planudes, but his aim
was to give a representative sample of the ancient epigrammatic art, including
the erotica and the paederastica. Although he was well aware of the effect erotic
epigrams might have on the reader, he attempted to present ancient eroticism
as a quite innocent pastime. The erotic epigrams were to be read merely as
exercises in the art of literary discourse, as magnificent words without sub-
stance. Still, Cephalas had good reason to doubt that his idea of a textual
labyrinth of words referring to other words, and not to some obscene reality,
would be embraced without protest by all the readers of his anthology. Know-
ing that he easily could be misunderstood despite the priggish prefaces to the
two books of erotic epigrams, he felt obliged to pay lip service to orthodox
fundamentalists by adding a collection of Christian epigrams.
This is also illustrated by Cephalas’ preface to the collection of Christian
epigrams: t2 t0n Cristian0n protet1cqz eJseb‰ te kaò qe¦a ™pigr1mmata kÌn oW
æEllhneß äpar6skzntai, “Let the pious and godly epigrams of the Christians
take precedence, even if the Hellenes are displeased”. The verb protet1cqz is
deliberately ambiguous in this context. It indicates not only that the collection
of Christian epigrams is placed before the epigrams of the Hellenes (AP IV–VII
and IX–XIV), but also that it takes the place of honour. The epigrams of the
Christians deservedly rank first because they are Christian – which is a circular
argument, of course, but one indicative of the dire straits Cephalas found
himself in. He risked being stigmatized as a Hellene himself for publishing an
anthology of pagan epigrams. Cephalas obviously felt the need to deny overtly
any inclination towards “Hellenism”. The introduction to AP I and the Hagia
Sophia epigram with which AP I begins, bear out the same unequivocal mes-
sage: “I, Cephalas, have nothing to do with the Hellenes, I am really not one
of them”. In ninth-century Byzantium all sorts of people were branded æEllhn:
iconoclasts, intellectuals, political opponents, and so forth^42. There is no need
(^42) See I. ROCHOW, in: Paganism in the Later Roman Empire and in Byzantium, ed. M.
SALAMON. Krakow 1991, 133–156.