CHAPTER XXI.
THE ANTHOLOGY.
The History of its Compilation.—Collections of Meleager, Philippus, Agathias, Cephalas, Planudes.—The Palatine MS.—The Sections of the Anthology.—Dedicatory Epigrams.—Simonides.—Epitaphs: Real and Literary.—Callimachus.—Epigrams on Poets.—Antipater of Sidon.—Hortatory Epigrams.—Palladas.—Satiric Epigrams.—Lucillius.—Amatory Epigrams.—Meleager, Straton, Philodemus, Antipater, Rufinus, Paulus Silentiarius, Agathias, Plato.—Descriptive Epigrams.
The Anthology may from some points of view be regarded as the most valuable relic of antique literature which we possess. Composed of several thousand short poems, written for the most part in the elegiac metre, at different times and by a multitude of authors, it is coextensive with the whole current of Greek history, from the splendid period of the Persian war to the decadence of Christianized Byzantium. Many subjects of interest in Greek life, which would otherwise have had to be laboriously illustrated from the historians or the comic poets, are here fully and melodiously set forth. If we might compare the study of Greek literature to a journey in some splendid mountain region, then we might say with propriety that from the sparkling summits where Æschylus and Sophocles and Pindar sit enthroned we turn in our less strenuous moods to gather the meadow flowers of Meleager, Palladas, Callimachus. Placing them between the leaves of the book of our memory, we possess an everlasting treasure of sweet thoughts, which will serve in after-days to remind us of those scenes of Olympian majesty through which we travelled. The slight effusions of these minor poets are even nearer to our hearts than the masterpieces of the noblest Greek literature. They treat with a touching limpidity and sweetness of the joys and fears and hopes and sorrows that are common to all humanity. They introduce us to the actual life of a bygone civilization, stripped of its political or religious accidents, and tell us that the Greeks of Athens or of Sidon thought and felt exactly as we feel. Even the Graffiti of Pompeii have scarcely more power to reconstruct the past and summon as in dreams the voices and the forms of long-since-buried men. There is yet another way in which the Anthology brings us closer to the Greeks than any other portion of their literature. The lyrists express an intense and exalted mood of the race in its divine adolescence. The tragedians exhibit the genius of Athens in its maturity. The idyllists utter a rich nightingale note from the woods and fields of Sicily. But the Anthology carries us through all the phases of Hellenic civilization upon its uninterrupted undercurrent of elegiac melody. The clear fresh light of the morning, the splendor of noonday, the mellow tints of sunset, and the sad gray hues of evening are all there. It is a tree which bears the leaves and buds and blossoms and fruitage of the Greek spirit on its boughs at once. Many intervals in the life of the nation which are represented by no other portion of its literature—the ending, for example, of the first century before Christ—here receive a brilliant illustration. Again, there is no more signal proof of the cosmopolitan nature of the later Greek culture than is afforded by the Anthology. From Rome, Alexandria, Palestine, Byzantium, no less than from the isles and continent of Greece, are recruited the poets, whose works are enshrined in this precious golden treasury of fugitive pieces.
The history of the Anthology is not without interest. By a gradual process of compilation and accretion it grew into its present form from very slight beginnings. The first impulse to collect epigrams seems to have originated in connection with archæology. From the very earliest the Greeks were in the habit of engraving sentences, for the most part in verse, upon their temples, statues, trophies, tombs, and public monuments of all kinds. Many of these inscriptions were used by Herodotus and Thucydides as authorities for facts and dates. But about 200 B.C. one Polemon made a general collection of the authentic epigrams to be found upon the public buildings of the Greek cities. After him Alcetas copied the dedicatory verses at Delphi. Similar collections are ascribed to Mnestor and Apellas Ponticus. Aristodemus is mentioned as the compiler of the epigrams of Thebes. Philochorus performed the same service for Athens. Neoptolemus of Paros and the philosopher Euhemerus are also credited with similar antiquarian labors. So far, the collectors of epigrams had devoted themselves to historical monuments; and of their work, in any separate form at least, no trace exists. But Meleager of Gadara (B.C. 60) conceived the notion of arranging in alphabetical order a selection of lyric and erotic poetry, which he dedicated to his friend Diocles. He called this compilation by the name of στέφανος, or wreath, each of the forty-six poets whom he admitted into his book being represented by a flower. Philip of Thessalonica, in the time of Trajan, following his example, incorporated into the garland of Meleager those epigrams which had acquired celebrity in the interval. About the same time or a little later, Straton of Sardis made a special anthology of poems on one class of subjects, which is known as the μοῦσα παιδική, and into which, besides ninety-eight of his own epigrams, he admitted many of the compositions of Meleager, Philip, and other predecessors. These collections belong to the classical period of Greek literature. But the Anthology, as we possess it, had not yet come into existence. It remained for Agathias, a Byzantine Greek of the age of Justinian, to undertake a comprehensive compilation from all the previous collections. After adding numerous poems of a date posterior to Straton, especially those of Paulus Silentiarius, Macedonius, Rufinus, and himself, he edited his κύκλος ἐπιγραμμάτων, divided into seven books. The first book contained dedicatory epigrams, the second descriptive poems, the third epitaphs, the fourth reflections on the various events of life, the fifth satires, the sixth erotic verses, the seventh exhortations to enjoyment. Upon the general outline of the Anthology as arranged by Agathias two subsequent collections were founded. Constantinus Cephalas, in the tenth century, at Byzantium, and in the reign of Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, undertook a complete revision and recombination of all pre-existing anthologies. With the patience of a literary bookworm, to whom the splendid libraries of the metropolis were accessible, he set about his work, and gave to the Greek anthology that form which it now bears. But the vicissitudes of the Anthology did not terminate with the labors of Cephalas. Early in the fourteenth century a monk, Planudes, set to work upon a new edition. It appears that he contented himself with compiling and abridging from the collection of Cephalas. His principal object was to expurgate it from impurities and to supersede it by what he considered a more edifying text. Accordingly he emended, castrated, omitted, interpolated, altered, and remodelled at his own sweet will: "non magis disposuit quam mutilavit et ut ita dicam castravit hunc librum, detractis lascivioribus epigrammatis, ut ipse gloriatur," says Lascaris in the preface to his edition of the Planudean Anthology.[163] He succeeded, however, to the height of his desire; for copies ceased to be made of the Anthology of Cephalas; and when Europe in the fifteenth century awoke to the study of Greek literature, no other collection but that of Planudes was known. Fortunately for this most precious relic of antiquity, there did exist one exemplar of the Anthology of Cephalas. Having escaped the search of Poggio, Aurispa, Filelfo, Poliziano, and of all the emissaries whom the Medici employed in ransacking the treasure-houses of Europe, this unique manuscript was at last discovered in 1606 by Claude de Saumaise, better known as Milton's antagonist Salmasius, in the Palatine Library at Heidelberg. A glance at this treasure assured the young scholar—for Saumaise was then aged only twenty-two—that he had made one of the most important discoveries which remained within the reach of modern students. He spent years in preparing a critical edition of its text; but all his work was thrown away, for the Leyden publishers to whom he applied refused to publish the Greek without a Latin version, and death overtook him before he had completed the requisite labor. Meanwhile the famous Palatine MS. had been transferred, after the sack of Heidelberg in 1623, to the Vatican, as a present to Pope Gregory XV. Isaac Voss, the rival of Saumaise, induced one Lucas Langermann to undertake a journey to Rome, in order that he might make a faithful transcript of the MS. and publish it, to the annoyance of the great French scholar. But Saumaise dying in 1653, the work, undertaken from motives of jealousy, was suspended. The MS. reposed still upon the shelves of the Vatican Library; and in 1776 the Abbé Giuseppe Spalletti completed a trustworthy copy of its pages, which was bought by Ernest, Duke of Gotha and Altenburg, for his library. In the year 1797 the MS. itself was transferred to Paris after the treaty of Tolentino; and in 1815 it was restored to Heidelberg, where it now reposes. Meanwhile Brunck had published, from copies of this MS., the greater portion of the Anthology in his Analecta Veterum Poetarum Græcorum; and Jacobs, between 1794 and 1814, had edited the whole collection with minutest accuracy upon the faith of the Abbé Spalletti's exemplar. The edition of Didot, to which I shall refer in my examination of the Anthology,[164] is based not only on the labors of Brunck and Jacobs, but also upon the MSS. of the unfortunate Chardon de la Rochette, who, after spending many years of his life in the illustration of the Anthology of Cephalas, was forced in old age to sell his collections for a small sum. They passed in 1836 into the possession of the (then) Imperial Library.
The Palatine MS., which is our sole authority for the Anthology as arranged by Cephalas, is a 4to parchment of 710 pages. It has been written by different hands, at different times, and on different plans of arrangement. The index does not always agree with the contents, but seems to be that of an older collection, of which the one we possess is an imperfect copy. Yet Cephalas is often mentioned, and always with affectionate reverence, by the transcribers of the MS. In one place he is called ὁ μακάριος καὶ ἀείμνηστος καὶ τριπόθητος ἄνθρωπος, "the blessed man, who is ever to be held in thrice affectionate and longing recollection," the sentiment of which words we in the middle of this nineteenth century may most cordially echo.
The first section of the Anthology is devoted to Christian epigrams upon the chief religious monuments and statues of Byzantium. However these may interest the ecclesiastical student, they have no value for a critic of Greek poetry. The second section consists of a poem in hexameters upon the statues which adorned the gymnasium of Zeuxippus. Some conception may be formed, after the perusal of this very pedestrian composition, of the art treasures which Byzantium contained in the fifth century. Authentic portraits of the great poets and philosophers of Greece, as well as works of imagination illustrative of the Iliad and the Attic tragedies, might then be studied in one place of public resort. Byzantium had become a vast museum for the ancient world. The third section is devoted to mural inscriptions from the temple of Apollonis in Cyzicus. The fourth contains the prefaces of Meleager, Philip, and Agathias, to their several collections. The fifth, which includes 309 epigrams, is consecrated to erotic poetry. The sixth, which numbers 358, consists of a collection of inscriptions from temples and public monuments recording the illustrious actions of the Greeks or votive offerings of private persons. In the seventh we read 748 epitaphs of various sorts. The eighth carries us again into the dismal region of post-pagan literature: it contains nothing but 254 poems from the pen of Saint Gregory the Theologian. The 827 epigrams of the ninth section are called by their collector ἐπιδεικτικά; that is to say, they are composed in illustration of a variety of subjects, anecdotical, rhetorical, and of general interest. Perhaps this part of the whole Anthology has been the favorite of modern imitators and translators. Passing to the tenth section, we find 126 semi-philosophical poems, most of which record the vanity of human life and advise mortals to make the best of their brief existence by enjoyment. The eleventh is devoted to satire. It is here that the reflex influence of Latin on Greek literature is most perceptible. The twelfth section bears the name of Straton, and exhibits in its 258 epigrams the morality of ancient Hellas under the aspect which has least attraction for modern readers. The thirteenth embraces a few epigrams in irregular metres. The fourteenth is made up of riddles and oracles. The fifteenth, again, has half a century of poems which could not well be catalogued elsewhere. The sixteenth contains that part of the Planudean collection which does not occur in our copy of the Anthology of Cephalas. It may be mentioned in conclusion that, with one or two very inconsiderable exceptions, none of the poems of the early Greek lyrists and Gnomic writers are received into the so-called Anthology.
To the student of Greek history and Greek customs no section of the Anthology is more interesting than that which includes the ἐπιγράμματα ἀναθηματικά, the record of the public and the private votive offerings in Hellas. Here, as in a scroll spread out before us, in the silver language of the great Simonides,[165] may be read the history of the achievements of the Greeks against Xerxes and his hosts. The heroes of Marathon, the heroes of Thermopylæ, Megistias the soothsayer, Leonidas the king, Pausanias the general, the seamen of Salamis, the Athenian cavalry, the Spartans of Platæa—all receive their special tribute of august celebration at the hands of the poet who best knew how to suit simple words to splendid actions. Again, the στήλη which commemorated in Athens the patriotic tyrannicide of Aristogeiton, the statue of Pan which Miltiades after Marathon consecrated in honor of his victory, the trophies erected by Pausanias at Delphi to Phœbus, the altar to Zeus Eleutherios dedicated in common by all the Greeks, the tripod sent to Delphi by Gelon and the other tyrants of Sicily after their victory over the Carthaginians, for each and all of these Simonides was called on to compose imperishable verse. Our heart trembles even now when we read such lines as these:
ὦ ξεῖν' ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.[166]