Gerhard Krahmer: A Forgotten Latin Commentator of John of Gaza’s Tabula Mundi
Gerhard Krahmer: A Forgotten Latin Commentator of John of Gaza’s Tabula Mundi

Summary/Abstract: Some time in the 6th century John of Gaza composed an obscure mostly hexametric bipartite poem of 732 lines, which included two invocations in iambic verse (Prol. I, 1-25; Prol. II, 1-4)2. The poem describes a pinax kosmikos (Tabula Mundi), a picture of the universe, a highly complex painting in an uncertain location and with an equally uncertain date. The Tabula Mundi belonged to the well-established rhetorical tradition of the ecphrasis, a rhetorical genre which also comprised descriptions of buildings. Such declamatory presentations were sometimes commissioned to rhetoricians or poets for opening ceremonies. Lucian of Samosate’s de domo with its gallery of mythological paintings became a masterpiece of the genre. Paulus Silentiarius’ ecphrasis of the HagiaSophia Church with its magnificent pulpit, and Philostratus the Elder’s guide to the painting gallery of Naples (Imagines) also won well deserved fame in the history of the ancient Greek and Byzantine belles-lettres.

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