Agathias Scholasticus (Ancient Greek:Ἀγαθίας σχολαστικός;c. AD 530[1] – 582[1]/594) was aGreekpoet and the principalhistorian of part of the reign of the Roman emperorJustinian I between 552 and 558.
Agathias was a native ofMyrina (Mysia), an Aeolian city in westernAsia Minor. His father was Memnonius. His mother was presumably Pericleia. A brother of Agathias is mentioned in primary sources, but his name has not survived. Their probable sister Eugenia is known by name. TheSuda clarifies that Agathias was active in the reign of the Roman emperorJustinian I, mentioning him as a contemporary ofPaul the Silentiary,Macedonius of Thessalonica andTribonian.[2]
Agathias mentions being present inAlexandria as a law student at the time when an earthquake destroyed Berytus (Beirut).[1] Thelaw school of Berytus had been recognized as one of the three official law schools of the empire (533). Within a few years, as the result of thedisastrous earthquake of 551,[3][4][5] the students were transferred toSidon.[6] The dating of the event to 551: as a law student, Agathias could be in his early twenties, which would place his birth toc. 530.[1]
He mentions leaving Alexandria forConstantinople shortly following the earthquake. Agathias visited the island ofKos, where "he witnessed the devastation caused by the earthquake". At the fourth year of his legal studies, Agathias and fellow students Aemilianus, John and Rufinus are mentioned making a joint offering toMichael theArchangel at Sosthenium, where they prayed for a "prosperous future".[1]
He returned toConstantinople in 554 to finish his training, and practised as anadvocatus (scholasticus) in the courts.John of Epiphania reports that Agathias practiced his profession in the capital.Evagrius Scholasticus andNikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos describe Agathias as arhetor ("public speaker"). TheSuda and a passage ofJohn of Nikiû call him "Agathias the scholastic".[1][7] He is known to have served as pater civitatis ("Father of the City", effectively amagistrate) ofSmyrna. He is credited with constructing publiclatrines for the city. While Agathias mentions these buildings, he fails to mention his own role in constructing them.[1][8]
Myrina is known to have erected statues to honor Agathias, his father Memnonius, and Agathias' unnamed brother. He seems to have been known to his contemporaries more as an advocatus and a poet. There are few mentions of Agathias as a historian.[1]
Few details survive of his personal life – mainly in his extant poems. One of them tells the story of his pet cat eating hispartridge. Another (Gr.Anth. 7.220) responds to his seeing the tomb of the courtesanLais of Corinth, implying a visit to that city, which he refers to using the poetic name Ephyra. No full account of his life survives.[1]
Literature, however, was Agathias' favorite pursuit, and he remains best known as a poet. Of hisDaphniaca, a collection of short poems inhexameter on 'love and romance' in nine books, only the introduction has survived.[1] But he also composed over a hundredepigrams, which he published together with epigrams by friends and contemporaries in aCycle of New Epigrams orCycle of Agathias, probably early in the reign of emperorJustin II (r. 565–578). This work largely survives in theGreek Anthology—the edition byMaximus Planudes preserves examples not found elsewhere.[1] Agathias's poems exhibit considerable taste and elegance.
He also wrote marginal notes on theDescription of Greece (Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις) ofPausanias.
Almost equally valued are Agathias'sHistories, which he started in the reign of Justin II. He explains his own motivation in writing it, as simply being unwilling to let "the momentous events of his own times" go unrecorded. He credits his friends with encouraging him to start this endeavor, particularly one Eutychianus.[1] This work in five books,On the Reign of Justinian, continues the history ofProcopius, whose style it imitates, and is the chief authority for the period 552–558. It deals chiefly with the struggles of the Imperial army, under the command of generalNarses, against theGoths,Vandals,Franks andPersians.[9]
The work survives, but seems incomplete. Passages of his history indicate that Agathias had planned to cover both the final years of Justin II and the fall of theHuns but the work in its known form includes neither.Menander Protector implies that Agathias died before having a chance to complete his history. The latest event mentioned in the Histories is the death of the Persian kingKhosrau I (r. 531–579); which indicates that Agathias was still alive in the reign ofTiberius II Constantine (r. 578–582). The emperorMaurice (r. 582–602) is never mentioned, suggesting that Agathias was dead by 582.[1]
Menander Protector continued the history of Agathias, covering the period from 558 to 582.Evagrius Scholasticus alludes to Agathias' work, but he doesn't seem to have had access to the full History.
According to theCatholic Encyclopedia, Agathias's Histories "abound in philosophic reflection. He is able and reliable, though he gathered his information from eye-witnesses, and not, as Procopius, in the exercise of high military and political offices. He delights in depicting the manners, customs, and religion of the foreign peoples of whom he writes; the great disturbances of his time, earthquakes, plagues, famines, attract his attention, and he does not fail to insert "many incidental notices of cities, forts, and rivers, philosophers, and subordinate commanders." Many of his facts are not to be found elsewhere, and he has always been looked on as a valuable authority for the period he describes."
According to theEncyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, "The author prides himself on his honesty and impartiality, but he is lacking in judgment and knowledge of facts; the work, however, is valuable from the importance of the events of which it treats".[9]
Christian commentators note the superficiality of Agathias'Christianity: "There are reasons for doubting that he was a Christian, though it seems improbable that he could have been at that late date a genuine pagan" (Catholic Encyclopedia). "No overt pagan could expect a public career during the reign of Justinian, yet the depth and breadth of Agathias' culture was not Christian" (Kaldellis).
Agathias (Histories 2.31) is the only authority for the story of Justinian's closing of the re-founded Platonic (actuallyneoplatonic)Academy in Athens (529), which is sometimes cited as the closing date of "Antiquity".[10] The dispersed neo-Platonists, with as much of their library as could be transported, found temporary refuge in thePersian capital ofCtesiphon, and afterwards— under treaty guarantees of security that form a document in the history offreedom of thought— atEdessa, which just a century later became one of the places where Muslim thinkers encountered ancient Greek culture and took an interest in its science and medicine.
Agathias'sHistories are also a source of information about pre-Islamic Iran, providing—in summary form—"our earliest substantial evidence for theKhvadhaynamagh tradition",[11] that later formed the basis ofFerdowsi'sShahname and provided much of the Iranian material foral-Tabari'sHistory.
Agathias recorded the earliest description of the rules ofbackgammon, which he callsτάβλη (tabula) as it is still called in Greece, in a story relating an unlucky game played by the emperorZeno. Zeno had a stack of seven checkers, three stacks of two checkers and twoblots, checkers that stand alone on a point and are therefore in danger of being put outside the board by an incoming opponent checker. Zeno threw the three dice with which the game was played and obtained 2, 5 and 6. The white and black checkers were so distributed on the points that the only way to use all of the three results, as required by the game rules, was to break the three stacks of two checkers into blots, thus exposing them to capture and ruining the game for Zeno.[12][13]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Agathias".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 370. This cites as authorities: This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Agathias".Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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