Dating Strato of Sardis

Strato of Sardis is the main poet of what is now Book 12 of the Greek Anthology. He was the author of a book of pederastic epigrams, the Boyish Muse (Mousa Paidikē), which in time became Book 12's armature. In a poem clearly written to close the Boyish Muse, he declares that the poems are not autobiographical but were written to please others, presumably patrons:

One day, perhaps, a reader will look back 

At these my playthings, reckoning these toils 

Of love were all my own. It is not so: 

Incessantly I jot assorted lines 

For every sort of man in love with boys, 

Since some god gave me this capacity. (AP12.258)

Look in most dictionaries of classical literature and civilisation and, if you find him at all, you will find Strato of Sardis dated to the reign of Hadrian (120s-130s AD). The reason given is that public knowledge of the Emperor's taste for beautiful young men encouraged Strato to court his patronage. An address to a doctor called Capito in a Stratonian poem found elsewhere in the Anthology (11.117) was also thought to pin the poem to Hadrian's reign, but Alan Cameron in The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes shot this down.

Sometimes a Neronian date is suggested instead, on the same basis (poets write about liking boys when the Emperor likes boys), which I've always thought is (a) slender and (b) potentially just a bit homophobic (I don't think this is a question on which I get to make a call).

Kathleen Coleman calls out these attempts in the introduction (xxxiii-iv) to her excellent commentary on De Spectaculis. She is inclined to place Strato before Martial, drawing attention to two parallels that she thinks indicate Martial had read the Boyish Muse: AP 12.175 is very like Martial 9.25, and AP 12.191 is similar to Martial 4.7.

But of course the influence could run either way -- or perhaps even both ways. One poem in particular encourages me to believe that Strato and Martial were contemporaries, both writing under Domitian, another emperor who liked young men. Indeed, he collected them.

Here is Martial, praising the Emperor's taste. The scene is set on Olympus. Ganymede implores that he may cut his long hair and assume the station of an adult man, as Domitian's 'Ausonian cupbearer' (Earinus) has just now done on earth below. Jupiter replies:

"My sweetest boy, it's not me but the facts that turn you down. Our Caesar has a thousand cupbearers who look like you. His whole vast palace teems with gorgeous hunks. But if your haircut makes you look grown-up, who else will mix my nectar?"

Compare now Strato:

Are they emerging from some holy shrine? 

What is their source, this army of Desires 

That shed bright beams on everything around?

Their brightness clouds my vision, gentlemen: 

Which one is slave, which free? I cannot say. 

A mortal man, their lord? It cannot be; 

Or if a mortal, greater man by far 

Than Zeus, who owned a single Ganymede, 

Though mighty god. How many such has he? (AP 12.258)

Strato declares the unnamed mortal owner 'greater by far than Zeus'; in similar vein, Martial often also flatters his Emperor as a living god. I am confident that Strato too is courting Domitian’s patronage.