Paul the Silentiary, also known as Paulus Silentiarius (, died AD 575–580), was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

poet and courtier to the emperor

Justinian Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...

Constantinople Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...

Life

What little we know of Paul's life comes largely from the contemporary historian and poet Agathias, a friend and admirer, who describes him as coming from a rich and illustrious family, with a father, Cyrus, and a grandfather, Florus, who both probably held public office. Paul also entered public life and became a ''silentiary'' – one of a group of 30 court officials of privileged backgrounds organised under three officers (''decurions'') whose first duty was maintaining order and silence in the

Great Palace of Constantinople The Great Palace of Constantinople (, ''Méga Palátion''; ), also known as the Sacred Palace (, ''Hieròn Palátion''; ), was the large imperial Byzantine palace complex located in the south-eastern end of the peninsula today making up the Fati ...

. They also fulfilled important commissions, especially in church matters, and by the sixth century their order had attained the social rank of ''illustris'', the highest in the late empire. Paul himself may have risen to become their chief (''primicerius''). He died some time between 575 and 580.

Works

Agathias considered Paul's greatest work to be his long verse ecphrasis of Justinian's Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), composed after the reconstruction of the dome in 562 or 563. Paul sees the church as a "meadow" of many-coloured kinds of marble, and helps us to imagine the church before its many subsequent remodellings. The poem was probably commissioned by Justinian himself, with verses to be recited by Paul himself during the rededication ceremony. The panegyric consists of 1029 verses in

, starting with 134 lines of iambic trimeter, with the remainder in

dactylic hexameter Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter used in Ancient Greek epic and didactic poetry as well as in epic, didactic, satirical, and pastoral Latin poetry. Its name is derived from Greek (, "finger") and (, "six"). Dactylic hexameter consists o ...

. Of his other poems, some eighty epigrams in the classical tradition have been preserved in the

Greek Anthology The ''Greek Anthology'' () is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical Greece, Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ''Palatine ...

. Forty of these are love poems. Two are replies to poems by Agathias. In another Paul laments the death of Damocharis of Cos, Agathias's favourite pupil. J. A. Symonds calls these verses "the last autumnal blossoms on the tree of Greek beauty." Although his subject matter is varied, much is explicitly erotic and uses

Pagan Paganism (, later 'civilian') is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Christianity, Judaism, and Samaritanism. In the time of the ...

imagery, as in the following example:

I press her breasts, our mouths are joined, and I feed in unrestrained fury round her silver neck, but not yet is my conquest complete; I still toil wooing a maiden who refuses me her bed. Half of herself she has given to Aphrodite and half to Pallas, and I waste away between the two.''Anth. Pal''. v. 272. Paton, 1916. p
271.
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Sources

References

Texts and translations

* reek texts with facing German translation* reek texts*Bell, Peter Neville, ed. (2009
''Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian: Agapetus, 'Advice to the Emperor'; Dialogue on Political Science'; Paul the Silentiary, 'Description of Hagia Sophia
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press nglish translation and commentary* ''The Greek Anthology I'' (Loeb Classical Library) translated by W. R. Paton (1916) Cambridge MA: Harvard UP; London: Heinemann) riginal Greek with facing page English translations

Secondary literature

* reek texts with Italian translation* nglish translations only*"Paulus Silentiarius", William Smith (ed.) ''

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology The ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'' is a biographical dictionary of classical antiquity, edited by William Smith (lexicographer), William Smith and originally published in London by John Taylor (English publisher), Tayl ...

.'' Vol. III (London, 1870) *Symonds, J. A. (1876) ''Studies of the Greek Poets''. Vol. II (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1880)

External links

Paul the Silentiary: The Magnificence of Hagia Sophia
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Paul the Silentiary Greek male poets 6th-century Greek poets 6th-century deaths Epigrammatists of the Greek Anthology Ministers of Justinian I 6th-century Byzantine writers Byzantine poets Year of birth unknown Year of death uncertain