ANASTASIUS II, QUAESTOR or BALBUS. — Original hymnographer and melodist of the 10th century. Of him it is known only that in 907 he held the office of quaestor in Constantinople. His famous Funeral Canticle restored to prominence a poetic genre that had nearly been overwhelmed by canons. In the canons he composed, departing from common Byzantine versification, he originally adopted the second ode not in rhythmic verse but in iambic metres.
ANASTASIUS III, POPE — SILVER COIN.
He cultivated melody with success, as is shown by the Hymns or Strophes he left us; he also wrote a Panegyric or Encomium for St. Agathonicus the Martyr, published in the Analecta Bollandiana, 5 (1886), p. 396.
As a probable author of epigrammatic verses, he has been attributed the epigram that goes under the name of Anastasius Balbus in the Anthology (XV, 28; ed. F. Didot, II, Paris, p. 512) in 14 dactylic hexameters on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
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