Agapitus

This record appears to conflate more than one ancient figure named Agapitus, since it draws correspondence from collections separated by centuries and regions: Libanius (fourth-century Greek East) on one side, and Ennodius of Pavia and Cassiodorus (late fifth- and sixth-century Ostrogothic Italy) on the other. The best-attested western figure of this name is Flavius Agapitus, a Roman senator of the early sixth century who held the consulship in 517 and is named among the aristocratic correspondents and addressees in Ennodius's letters and in the administrative world reflected by Cassiodorus's Variae; he belonged to the senatorial elite that mediated between Rome's old aristocracy and the Ostrogothic court at Ravenna. The Agapitus addressed by Libanius, by contrast, is a separate, much earlier person known only as one of the rhetorician's many fourth-century correspondents in Antioch's literary and official circles. Because the underlying records are merged, no single biography can be stated with confidence; the identifications above should be treated as the most plausible attributions rather than a unified life.