Agathias or Agathias Scholasticus (c. AD 536-582/594), of Myrina, an Aeolian city in western Asia Minor, was a Greek poet and the historian who is a principal source for that part of the reign of Justinian I covered in his history.

He studied law at Alexandria, returned to Constantinople in 554 to finish his training and practised as an advocate (scholasticus) in the courts. Literature, however, was his favourite pursuit.

He wrote a number of short love-poems in epic metre, called Daphniaca. He also put together an anthology of epigrams by earlier and contemporary poets and himself, under the title of a Cycle of New Epigrams. Agathias re-edited the Greek Anthology, which preserves about a hundred of his epigrams, showing considerable taste and elegance. He also wrote marginal notes on the Periegetes of Pausanias.

After the death of Justinian (565), some of Agathias's friends persuaded him to write the history of his own times. This work in five books, On the Reign of Justinian, continues the history of Procopius, whose style it imitates, and is the chief authority for the period 552-558. It deals chiefly with the struggles of the Byzantine army, under the command of the eunuch Narses, against the Goths, Vandals, Franks and Persians.

"His pages 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." —Catholic Encyclopedia.

"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" (Enc. Brit. 1911). Gibbon contrasts Agathias as "a poet and rhetorician" with Procopius, "a statesman and soldier." Christian commentators note the superficiality of Agathias' nominal 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 (actually neoplatonic) Academy in Athens (529), which is often cited as the closing date of Antiquity. The dispersed scholars, with as much of their library as could be transported, found temporary refuge in the Persian capital of Ctesiphon, and return— under treaty guarantees of security that form a document in the history of freedom of thought— to Edessa, where just a century later the forces of Islam encountered the classical Greek culture of Antiquity, especially its science and medicine.

The Histories are similarly an important source on Pre-Islamic Iran, including - in very summary form - "our earliest substantial evidence for the Khvadhaynamagh tradition" that later formed the basis of Ferdowsi's Shahname and provided much of the Iranian material for al-Tabari's History.

References

1. Averil Cameron, "Agathias on the Sasanians" in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 23 (1969) p. 69.

Editions of the Histories

• Bonaventura Vulcanius (1594)
• Barthold G. Niebuhr, for the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, Bonn, 1828
• Jean P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 88, Paris, 1860, col. 1248-1608 (based on Niebuhr's edition above)
• Dindorf, Historici Graeci Minores, vol. II, Leipzig, (1871), p. 132-453.
• Rudolf Keydell, Agathiae Myrinaei Historiarum libri quinque in Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, vol. 2, Series Berolinensis, Walter de Gruyter, 1967
• Salvator Costanza, Agathiae Myrinaei Historiarum libri quinque, Universita degli Studi, Messina, 1969
• Joseph D. Frendo, Agathias: The Histories in Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae (translation with an introduction and short explanatory notes), vol. 2A, Series Berolinensis, Walter de Gruyter, 1975

Further reading

• Averil Cameron, "Agathias on the Sasanians" in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 23 (1969) pp 67-183.
• Averil Cameron, Agathias Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. ISBN 0-19-814352-4.
• Anthony Kaldellis, "Things are not what they are: Agathias Mythistoricus and the last laugh of Classical " in Classical Quarterly, 53 (2003) pp 295-300.
• Kaldellis, "The Historical and Religious Views of Agathias: A Reinterpretation," in , 69 (1999) pp 206-252.
• Kaldellis, "Agathias on history and poetry," in Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 38 (1997), pp 295-306
• W. S. Teuffel, "Agathias von Myrine", Philologus (1846)
• C. Krumbacher, (2nd ed. 1897)

External links

• Poems by Agathias English translations
• Encyclopædia Britannica 1911:Agathias
• Catholic Encyclopedia: Agathias
• Agathias on the Persians: excerpts from History (English)
• Gerald Bechtle, Bryn Mawr Classical Review of Rainer Thiel, Simplikios und das Ende der neuplatonischen Schule in Athen, Stuttgart, 1999 (in English).
• "Encyclopedia of Past Events