Abstract

Five epigrams in theGreek Anthologyare ascribed to Sophronius, sophist, poet, theologian and finally patriarch of Jerusalem when it fell to the Arabs in 638. Sophronius' other extant poems are all in the anacreontic metre, which he wrote with a certain fluency but (judged by classical standards) without perfect mastery. It is in principle quite possible that he also composed in so traditional a genre as the classicizing epigram, but (as we shall see) there are in fact considerable doubts about four of the five in question.