Editing Agathias (section)

==Writings==
Literature, however, was Agathias' favorite pursuit, and he remains best known as a poet. Of his ''Daphniaca'', a collection of short poems in [[hexameter]] on 'love and romance' in nine books, only the introduction has survived.<ref name="PLRE"/> But he also composed over a hundred [[epigram]]s, which he published together with  epigrams by friends and contemporaries in a ''Cycle of New Epigrams'' or ''Cycle of Agathias'', probably early in the reign of emperor [[Justin II]] (r. 565–578). This work largely survives in the ''[[Greek Anthology]]''—the edition by [[Maximus Planudes]] preserves examples not found elsewhere.<ref name="PLRE"/> Agathias's poems exhibit considerable taste and elegance.

He also wrote marginal notes on the ''Description of Greece'' ({{lang|grc|Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις}}) of [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]].

===Histories===
[[File:Europe 533-600.jpg|thumb|Europe and the East Roman Empire, AD 533–600]]
Almost equally valued are Agathias's ''Histories'', which he started in the reign of Justin II. He explains his own motivation in writing it, as simply being unwilling to let "the momentous events of his own times" go unrecorded. He credits his friends with encouraging him to start this endeavor, particularly one Eutychianus.<ref name="PLRE"/> This work in five books,  ''On the Reign of Justinian'', continues the history of [[Procopius]], whose style it imitates, and is the chief authority for the period 552–558. It deals chiefly with the struggles of the Imperial army, under the command of general [[Narses]], against the [[Goths]], [[Vandals]], [[Franks]] and [[Persian people|Persians]].<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=1|wstitle=Agathias|volume=1|page=370}} This cites as authorities:
*''Editio princeps'', by [[Bonaventura Vulcanius|B. Vulcanius]] (1594)
*the Bonn ''Corpus Scriptorum Byz. Hist.'', by [[Barthold Georg Niebuhr|B. G. Niebuhr]] (1828)
*[[Jacques Paul Migne|Migne]], ''Patrologia Graeca'', lxxxviii.
*L. Dindorf, ''Historici Graeci Minores'' (1871)
*[[Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel|W. S. Teuffel]], "Agathias von Myrine," in ''Philologus'' (i. 1846)
*[[Karl Krumbacher|C. Krumbacher]], ''Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur'' (2nd ed. 1897).</ref>

The work survives, but seems incomplete. Passages of his history indicate that Agathias had planned to cover both the final years of Justin II and the fall of the [[Huns]] but the work in its known form includes neither. [[Menander Protector]] implies that Agathias died before having a chance to complete his history. The latest event mentioned in the Histories is the death of the Persian king [[Khosrau I]] (r. 531–579);  which indicates that Agathias was still alive in the reign of [[Tiberius II Constantine]] (r. 578–582). The emperor [[Maurice (emperor)|Maurice]] (r. 582–602) is never mentioned, suggesting that Agathias was dead by 582.<ref name="PLRE"/>

[[Menander Protector]] continued the history of Agathias, covering the period from 558 to 582. [[Evagrius Scholasticus]] alludes to Agathias' work, but he doesn't seem to have had access to the full History.

According to the ''[[Catholic Encyclopedia]]'', Agathias's Histories "abound in philosophic reflection. He is able and reliable, though he gathered his information from eye-witnesses, and not, as Procopius, in the exercise of high military and political offices. He delights in depicting the manners, customs, and religion of the foreign peoples of whom he writes; the great disturbances of his time, earthquakes, plagues, famines, attract his attention, and he does not fail to insert "many incidental notices of cities, forts, and rivers, philosophers, and subordinate commanders." Many of his facts are not to be found elsewhere, and he has always been looked on as a valuable authority for the period he describes."

According to the [[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Eleventh Edition]], "The author prides himself on his honesty and impartiality, but he is lacking in judgment and knowledge of facts; the work, however, is valuable from the importance of the events of which it treats".<ref name="EB1911"/>

Christian commentators note the superficiality of Agathias' [[Christianity]]: "There are reasons for doubting that he was a Christian, though it seems improbable that he could have been at that late date a genuine pagan" (''Catholic Encyclopedia''). "No overt pagan could expect a public career during the reign of Justinian, yet the depth and breadth of Agathias' culture was not Christian" ([[Anthony Kaldellis|Kaldellis]]).

Agathias (''Histories'' 2.31) is the only authority for the story of Justinian's closing of the re-founded Platonic (actually [[Neoplatonism|neoplatonic]]) [[Platonic Academy|Academy]] in Athens (529), which is sometimes cited as the closing date of "[[Classical antiquity|Antiquity]]".<ref>{{cite book |title=A History of Greek Literature |last=Hadas |first=Moses |year=1950 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=0-231-01767-7 |page=273|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dOht3609JOMC&pg=PA273 }}</ref> The dispersed neo-Platonists, with as much of their library as could be transported, found temporary refuge in the [[Sasanian Empire|Persian]] capital of [[Ctesiphon]], and afterwards— under treaty guarantees of security that form a document in the history of [[freedom of thought]]— at [[Edessa, Mesopotamia|Edessa]], which just a century later became one of the places where Muslim thinkers encountered ancient Greek culture and took an interest in its science and medicine.

Agathias's ''Histories'' are also a source of information about pre-Islamic Iran, providing&mdash;in summary form&mdash;"our earliest substantial evidence for the [[Khwaday-Namag|Khvadhaynamagh]] tradition",<ref>Averil Cameron, "Agathias on the Sasanians" in ''Dumbarton Oaks Papers'', 23 (1969) p. 69.</ref> that later formed the basis of [[Ferdowsi]]'s ''[[Shahname]]'' and provided much of the Iranian material for [[Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari|al-Tabari]]'s ''History''.

[[File:Tabula - boardgame - Zeno game.svg|thumb|300px|A game of [[tabula (game)|τάβλι (tabula)]] played by Zeno in 480 and recorded by Agathias in ''circa''  530 because of a very unlucky dice result for Zeno. The game is nearly identical to [[backgammon]].<ref name="austin-zeno">Austin, Roland G. "Zeno's Game of τάβλη", ''The Journal of Hellenic Studies'' 54:2, 1934. p. 202-205.</ref>]]
Agathias recorded the earliest description of the rules of [[backgammon]], which he calls ''[[Tabula (game)|τάβλη (tabula)]]'' as it is still called in Greece, in a story relating an unlucky game played by the emperor [[Zeno (emperor)|Zeno]]. Zeno had a stack of seven checkers, three stacks of two checkers and two ''blots'', checkers that stand alone on a point and are therefore in danger of being put outside the board by an incoming opponent checker. Zeno threw the three dice with which the game was played and obtained 2, 5 and 6. The white and black checkers were so distributed on the points that the only way to use all of the three results, as required by the game rules, was to break the three stacks of two checkers into blots, thus exposing them to capture and ruining the game for Zeno.<ref name="austin-zeno"/><ref name="bell">Robert Charles Bell, ''Board and table games from many civilizations'', Courier Dover Publications, 1979, {{ISBN|0-486-23855-5}}, p. 33–35.</ref>