Gregory of Nazianzus, the Theologian, a leading Father of the 4th-century church, as a sensitive recipient of the messages of his time, introspective and imbued with Christian eschatology, also inclined towards poetry, especially epigrammatic poetry, which he adorned with rhetorical style.

The study of Callimachus and other Hellenistic epigram setters opened the way for him to compose his own epigrams.

The epigrams attributed to Gregory total 254 and are divided into Funeral (2-165) and Epigrams (166-254).