 Literature, however, was Agathias' favorite pursuit, and he remains best known as a poet.Of his "Daphniaca", a collection of short poems in hexameter on 'love and romance' in nine books, only the introduction has survived.But he also composed over a hundred epigrams, which he published together with epigrams by friends and contemporaries in a "Cycle of New Epigrams" or "Cycle of Agathias", probably early in the reign of emperor Justin II (r. 565–578).