The fate of Cyrus of Panopolis’ poetic heritage in the light of his biography

The paper is devoted to Cyrus of Panopolis, a renowned poet and prominent official of the 5th century. The author gives a detailed analysis of all information available about the life and works of Cyrus and of existing hypotheses by modern scholars that reconstruct his biography. It is known that Cyrus held a few senior administrative posts (he was the Prefect of Constantinople, the Praetorian Prefect of the East, and built the maritime city walls; he was also consul of the East and of the West in 441). Besides that, he was a court poet of Theodosius II. As a poet, he was considered a figure of greatest significance; however, there are no quotes from Cyrus in the writings of later Byzantine authors. Under the name of Cyrus, we have only a few epigrams in the Palatine Anthology, the part of which is attributed to another Cyrus, a poet of the 6th century. The scholarly novelty of this work consists in investigation of the causes of the disappearance of poetic output by Cyrus. The author discusses the question whether it was connected with the career collapse of Cyrus-official or it was lost later by chance, and comes to a conclusion that the connection really existed. According to the traditional view, Cyrus fell into disgrace of Theodosius II at the beginning of the 440s, after the fall of his patroness, Empress Eudocia. After that, he was exiled as a bishop to the town of Cotyaeum. The exile of Cyrus is usually dated to 441 or 443-444. Nevertheless, thorough study of the extant sources could lead us to the conclusion that the famous story about banishment of Cyrus by Theodosius II is a compilation of stories of different persons, such as Constantine, prefect of Constantinople in 447 and possibly bishop Eusebius of Dorylaeum, and is nothing but a legend, therefore the precise time of Cyrus’ exile is unknown. The article suggests that destruction of literary heritage of Cyrus was beneficial not to Theodosius himself but to his successors, Marcian and Pulcheria, who actually usurped the power after his death. The real reason of Cyrus’ exile, perhaps, was his rejection of the new imperial power, but pretext for Cyrus’ reprisal could be his accusation in paganism. The author attempts to attribute to Cyrus one more epigram from the Palatine anthology (PA 15, 10), that refers to the shipwreck (persistent metaphor of coup d’état). In the existing manuscripts of the Palatine Anthology it is not separated from the poetic panegyric by Cyrus addressed to Theodosius II.