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Agathias Scholasticus

Agathias Scholasticus

c. 530 CE–c. 582 CE · Constantinople (Istanbul)

Agathias, called Scholasticus (the lawyer), was a Greek poet and historian of the 6th century CE who worked at Constantinople in the reign of the emperor Justinian. He wrote a history continuing that of Procopius, covering the wars of his own time, and he both composed and compiled epigrams that became an important source for later Greek poetic anthologies. He is a major witness to the culture of the late antique East.

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Constantinople (Istanbul)קונסטנטינופולOttoman Empire

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

About Constantinople (Istanbul)

Constantinople, today Istanbul in Turkey, was the Greek colony of Byzantium until Constantine I refounded it as the imperial capital in 330, and for over a millennium it was the capital of the Byzantine Empire and a centre of Greek learning and Christian authority: the council of 381, which Gregory of Nazianzus led for a time, affirmed the Nicene Creed and ranked the city's bishop second only to Rome's, and Hagia Sophia rose in 537. Jews are recorded there from the late fourth century. Sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, it fell to the Ottomans in 1453, serving as their capital and a seat of Islamic learning until 1923; after 1492 Sephardi exiles made it a leading Jewish centre.

In Constantinople (Istanbul) at the same time

Procopius, Stephanus of Alexandria

Across the traditions, in Constantinople (Istanbul) at the same time

See other sages who lived in Constantinople (Istanbul)→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Agathias Scholasticus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

In the same tradition

Procopius, Stephanus of Alexandria

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Agathias Scholasticus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(2)