Paul the Silentiary, also known as
Paulus
Silentiarius ( , d.
Constantinople
, 575-580 AD), was an epigrammatist and an officer in the imperial
household of the Byzantine emperor
Justinian I, responsible for the silence
(hence his name Silentiarius)
in the imperial palace.
Paul is
best known for his hymn of praise of the
Hagia
Sophia
, in which he describes the church's architectural
and decorative characteristics after the reconstruction of the dome
in 562. Paul treats the church as a meadow of marble, due to
the many colours of marble employed in its construction. This
elaborate verse
eulogy is an important source
for imagining the magnificence of the
basilica before it was plundered many times in the
course of history. The poem was probably commissioned by Justinian
himself, and Paul had to read verses to the emperor through the
inauguration of the basilica. It consists of 1029 verses in
Greek, starting with 134 lines of
iambic trimeter, with the remainder
in the classical meter of epic,
dactylic hexameter.
About 80 of Paul's epigrams, a few erotic, are preserved in the
Greek Anthology. These epigrams draw
on the literary conventions of
classical antiquity and are not
identifiably Christian in content. They are interesting primarily
because of their social and historical information.
He was a close friend of
Agathias
Scholastikos, another author of epigrams, who provides some
scarce data about his life.
References
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