The popularity of the early Christian writer St. Methodius of Patara (III-early IV centuries A.D.) in the following centuries was based almost exclusively on the revelations falsely attributed to him ("Apocalypses"), telling about the last times and the end of the world. Of the original writings of Methodius in Greek, only the Feast of the Ten Virgins has been preserved in its entirety, and there are quite a few traces of acquaintance with it in later sources. Therefore, it seems appropriate to point out one possible reminiscence from the" Feast " contained in the newly-read inscription from the GE.

We are talking about a gold chased icon dating from the XIII ¹ or XII c. ² (the latter is more likely). On the obverse is an image of the Mother of God surrounded by archangels, holy warriors and prophets, and on the reverse is a flourishing cross surrounded by an inscription in the margins. Despite the fact that the icon has been known for a very long time (until 1898 it was kept in the collection of M. L. Pogodin, then entered the Russian Museum, and from there in 1931 in GE ³), the inscription was still read only in small fragments. After studying the photo and seeing the de visu site, I was able to reconstruct the Greek text ⁴ . Here is the exact transliteration broken down into words:

In traditional spelling, this poem, written in Iambic hexameter, looks like this::

The last word is misspelled (the second is pi instead of may), which has caused a number of misinterpretations in the past. However, inside the first pi, a vertical gasta is clearly visible,

¹. Bank A.V. Cherty palaiologovskogo stilya v vizantiiskom khudozhestvennom metalle [Features of the Paleologian style in Byzantine art metal]. Zapadnaya Evropa [Western Europe], Moscow, 1973, pp. 156-163.

² Belting Н. Likeness and Presence: a History of the Image before the Era of Art/Trans. Е. Jephcott. Chicago and L., 1994. P. 261-296.

³ See Smirnov A. P. Monuments of Byzantine painting. State Russian Museum, L., 1928. pp. 17, 28; Pyatnitsky Yu. A. One of the ways of penetration of monuments of Balkan art in Russia // The Old Russian state. The Balkans. Rus. SPb., 1995, pp. 233-234.

⁴ I would like to express my sincere gratitude to V. N. Zalesskaya, who drew my attention to this monument and gave me the opportunity to see it firsthand.

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ending just below the nail damage, which can only relate to the iota entered in pi. By the twelfth century, Ypsilon and iota had long been pronounced the same. Accordingly, when translated into Russian, the inscription will read as follows::

Holding the Creator of babies-the Word-in your arms,

You feed it with your breast - a wonderful miracle!

Pray with maternal boldness

Give absolution to me, George Ipatik.

The violation of the meter in the last line may be explained by the fact that the name and position of the icon's customer were mechanically substituted into the finished poem.

The word Lamp, which is not recorded in the dictionary, may be a reminiscence from the speech of Theophila in The Feast of the Ten Virgins (Word n. 4-5). There, the creative power of God creating babies in their mothers ' wombs is compared to a potter sculpting figurines in a cave. This detailed comparison is intended by Methodius to show that children born of adultery are no worse than all others, since the potter does not care where he gets the clay from. However, the very image of a potter sculpting babies (the verb used could well have given rise to a rather unusual word even for the Byzantine lexicon). 

A POSSIBLE ALLUSION TO METHODIUS OF PATARA IN A GREEK INSCRIPTION FROM THE HERMITAGE MUSEUM

D.Ye. Afinogenov

The paper presents the first publication of the verse inscription on a gold icon from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (N w 840) with the Greek text completely deciphered and the Russian metric translation. The inscription possibly contains an allusion to the "Symposion" by Methodius of Patara.

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