The empress and the poet: paganism and politics at the court of Theodosius II

Summary

The names of the poet Cyrus and the Empress Eudocia have always tended to be linked. They were indeed the two most celebrated poets of the court of Theodosius II – and its two most conspicuous political casualties. In the past their fall has generally been seen as the collapse of a movement to liberalize the increasingly intolerant Christian culture of the age. This paper offers an alternative interpretation, beginning with the career and personality of Cyrus.

Panopolis

Like so many Greek poets of the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, Fl. Taurus Seleucus Cyrus Hierax (to give him his recently discovered full name) was not born at one of the traditional cultural centres of the Graeco-Roman world, but in Upper Egypt. His home town was Panopolis. Cyrus was indeed by no means the first or last poet to be produced in such a seemingly unpromising spot. The most famous of his fellow townsmen, and an approximate contemporary of Cyrus, was the remarkable Nonnus, perhaps the most influential Greek poet since Callimachus. The wily Pamprepius, philosopher, magician and adventurer as well as poet, was born there on 29 September 440, just three months before Cyrus entered upon his consulship. About a century earlier the poet and grammarian Horapollon was born at Phenebith, a village in the nome of Panopolis.