Genre Nature of Empress Eudocia’s Poem “The Martyrdom of St. Cyprian”

Abstract

The article considers the issue of genre nature of the poem “The Martyrdom of St. Cyprian” by Empress Eudocia, the wife of Emperor Theodosius II (V century). It is noted that this is the only survived example of the Greek life written by hexameter, which from the genre point of view can be considered both as a life and as an epic poem. It is shown that the poem “The Martyrdom of St. Cyprian” is also a paraphrase of the prose version of the martyrdom of Cyprian and Justin, but this is not the only genre originality of the poem. The author proves that it contains elements of aretology, novel, autobiography, agadic Midrash; it also includes hymns. It is noted that in the poem one can see all the signs of “mix of genres,” typical for late antique and Byzantine literature. The novelty of the study is that it examines the genre characteristics of the poem for the first time. Special attention is paid to the influence of the epos by Nonnus on the Eudocia’s poem, which also contains various genre forms, in particular, hymns, and which also experienced the influence of the ancient novel. The author comes to the conclusion that the features of “mix of genres” while maintaining quite stable genre canons predetermined the further development of Byzantine literature.

Keywords

• empress eudocia
• “the martyrdom of st. cyprian”
• genre
• mix of genres
• literature of late antiquity
• byzantine literature