Christodorus ( el, Χριστόδωρος), a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

epic poet An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. ...

from

Coptos Qift ( arz, قفط ; cop, Ⲕⲉϥⲧ, link=no ''Keft'' or ''Kebto''; Egyptian Gebtu; grc, Κόπτος, link=no ''Coptos'' / ''Koptos''; Roman Justinianopolis) is a small town in the Qena Governorate of Egypt about north of Luxor, situated und ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

, flourished during the reign of Anastasius I (491–518). His father was named Paniskos (Πανίσκος).Suda, chi, 525
/ref> According to

Suidas The ''Suda'' or ''Souda'' (; grc-x-medieval, Σοῦδα, Soûda; la, Suidae Lexicon) is a large 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas (Σούδας) or Souidas ...

, he was the author of ''Patria'' (Gr. Πάτρια), accounts of the foundation, history and antiquities of various cities; ''Lydiaka'' (Gr. Λυδιακά), the mythical history of

Lydia Lydia (Lydian language, Lydian: ‎𐤮𐤱𐤠𐤭𐤣𐤠, ''Śfarda''; Aramaic: ''Lydia''; el, Λυδία, ''Lȳdíā''; tr, Lidya) was an Iron Age Monarchy, kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the mod ...

; ''Isaurica'' (Gr. Ἰσαυρικά), celebrating Anastasius' victory in the

Isaurian War The Isaurian War was a conflict that lasted from 492 to 497 and that was fought between the army of the Eastern Roman Empire and the rebels of Isauria. At the end of the war, Eastern Emperor Anastasius I regained control of the Isauria region and t ...

(492–497); three books of

epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two mille ...

s; and many other works. In addition to two epigrams (''Anthol. Pal.'' vii. 697, 698) we possess a description of eighty statues of gods, heroes and famous men and women in the gymnasium of Zeuxippus at

Constantinople la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه , alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis (" ...

(Ἔκφρασις τῶν ἀγαλμάτων τῶν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον γυμνάσιον τὸ ἐπικαλουμένον τοῦ Ζευξίππου). This text, consisting of 416

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...

s, forms the second book of the ''

Palatine Anthology The ''Palatine Anthology'' (or ''Anthologia Palatina''), sometimes abbreviated ''AP'', is the collection of Greek poems and epigrams discovered in 1606 in the Palatine Library in Heidelberg. It is based on the lost collection of Constantinus Ceph ...

''. The writer's chief models are

Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...

and

Nonnus Nonnus of Panopolis ( grc-gre, Νόννος ὁ Πανοπολίτης, ''Nónnos ho Panopolítēs'', 5th century CE) was the most notable Greek epic poet of the Imperial Roman era. He was a native of Panopolis (Akhmim) in the Egyptian Thebai ...

, whom he follows closely in the structure of his hexameters. Opinions are divided as to the merits of the work. Some critics regard it as of great importance for the history of art and a model of description; others consider it valueless, alike from the historical, mythological and archaeological points of view. See Friedrich Baumgarten, ''De Christodoro Poeta Thebano'', Bonn (1881), and his article in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, III (1897) 2450–2452;

Wilhelm von Christ Wilhelm von Christ (2 August 1831 – 8 February 1906) was a German classical scholar. Biography He was born in Geisenheim in Hesse-Nassau. From 1854 till 1860 he taught in the Maximiliansgymnasium at Munich, and in 1861 was appointed professor o ...

, ''Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur'' (1898); Francesco Tissoni, ''Cristodoro. Un’introduzione e un commento'', Alessandria (2000).

Notes

References

*
William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, Vol. 1, page 698
{{Authority control 5th-century births 6th-century deaths Byzantine poets Roman-era poets 5th-century Byzantine writers 6th-century Byzantine writers 6th-century Byzantine people 5th-century Egyptian people Epigrammatists of the Greek Anthology 6th-century Egyptian people 6th-century Greek poets