ABSTRACT
Few topics in the history of Byzantine art have been more debated than the question of the “Macedonian Renaissance,” a term that has been applied to a series of classicizing works created during the tenth century in many media, including manuscript painting, ivory and bone carving, metalwork, and glassware. The essential problem is whether these works of art represented a conscious revival of antiquity, or whether they were merely the last remnants of a devalued classical tradition, whose only purpose was to convey a superficial antique appearance, now drained of specific content. The epigram on the aquatic musician by John Geometres, however, appears to fall into the second category, for while the poem names specific terrestrial musicians from ancient mythology (Orpheus, Thamyris, and Cinyras) as parallels to his aquatic subject, the Byzantine writer fails to mention any mythological musicians closely associated with the sea, such as Arion and Phalanthus.
