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Eudocia’s Singing Deacon: Another Programmatic Passage In Late Antique Christian Verse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2021

Andrew Faulkner
Andrew Faulkner*
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
*
*[email protected].
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Abstract

Amongst the varied literary output of the fifth-century empress Aelia Eudocia is a hexameter paraphrase of the martyrdom of Saints Cyprian and Justina. The opening lines of the poem, which were rediscovered in the second half of the 20th century, describe the conversion of Justina (Justa) to Christianity through the preaching of a deacon named Praulius. Even as Eudocia remains close to her prose model(s), she imposes her own interpretation upon the text through subtle variation and careful choice of poetic vocabulary. In her version, she depicts the preacher Praulius as a Christian counterpart to the traditional singer of hexameter poetry, linked also to her own poetic activity. This description of Praulius’ transformational preaching, prominently placed at the outset of the poem, constitutes another programmatic passage in late antique Christian verse.

Keywords

Eudociahexameterlate antiquityCyprianJustina
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 141 , November 2021 , pp. 216 - 223
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies

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Footnotes

An early version of this paper was presented at a conference hosted at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) in Denmark in June 2019, with financial support also provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am immensely grateful to AIAS for facilitating this research, as well as to the participants in the conference for their comments, especially Gianfranco Agosti, Kristoffel Demoen, Nicholas Richardson and Christos Simelidis. For helpful criticism of earlier drafts, I am also thankful to my colleague Riemer Faber, the participants in a seminar at the University of Toronto and the anonymous referees.

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