George of Pisidia

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George of Pisidia ( Georgios Pisides * before 600 [perhaps around 580] in Antioch in Pisidia ; † shortly after 635 ) was an Eastern Roman poet and official.

life and work

Georg was (according to a late source) perhaps a deacon in Constantinople and wrote several poems in ancient Greek dedicated to the Eastern Roman emperor Herakleios . Georg celebrates Herakleios, whom he himself probably accompanied on his campaigns against the Persian Sassanid Empire , in panegyric form, although George's Expeditio Persica still contains valuable information about Herakleios' Persian War . The work also expresses the contemporary mood in the capital in connection with the war against the Sassanids, which can be described quite aptly as “ crusade mood ”. The work was later used by Theophanes and other authors.

Other poems deal with the arrival of the emperor in Constantinople from Africa (610) and the return from the east (630), and another is his Avar war . George's poems were intended for public lecture and were intended to glorify the emperor.

He wrote a long poem about the hexaemeron in 1894 iambic trimeters .

Georg's poems (some of which have only survived in fragments) are philologically interesting, for example with regard to the metrics . In spite of his connection with ancient forms, he already points to Middle Byzantine literature . Georg was also clearly trying to imitate ( mimesis ) traditional ancient poetry. Together with the historian Theophylaktos Simokates , Georg can be considered one of the last authors of late antiquity .

Text output

  • Agostino Pertusi : Giorgio di Pisidia. Poemi. I. Panegirici epici (Studia patristica et Byzantina 7) . Ettal 1959 (edition with Italian translation and commentary).

literature

For the early 7th century, see generally the references in the article Herakleios .

  • James Howard-Johnston : Witnesses to a World Crisis. Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century . Oxford 2010, p. 16ff.
  • Irene Huber: Views of a civilized person on the uncivilized world: The Sāsāniden image of Georgios Pisides and its historical value for the late antique Iran . In: Klio 90, 2008, pp. 162-192.
  • Herbert Hunger : Georgios No. 6 . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Vol. 4, Col. 1287f. (Literature)
  • Herbert Hunger: The high-level profane literature of the Byzantines . Vol. 2 (of 2). Beck, Munich 1978, p. 112f.
  • John Martindale: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire . Vol. IIIa, Cambridge 1992, p. 523.
  • Mary Whitby: The Devil in Disguise: The End of George of Pisidia's Hexaemeron Reconsidered . In: Journal of Hellenic Studies 115, 1995, pp. 115-129.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Frank Schleicher: Cosmographia Christiana. Cosmology and Geography in Early Christianity . Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77908-3 , p. 134.
personal data
SURNAME George of Pisidia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Eastern Roman poet
DATE OF BIRTH around 580
PLACE OF BIRTH Antioch in Pisidia
DATE OF DEATH around 630