As to the date of Cephalas there is no certain indication. Suidas apparently quotes from his Anthology; but even were we certain that these quotations are not made from original sources, his lexicon contains entries made at different times over a space of several centuries. A scholium to one of the epigrams[24] of Alcaeus of Messene speaks of a discussion on it by Cephalas which took place in the School of the New Church at Constantinople. This New Church was built by the Emperor Basil I. (reigned 867-876). Probably Cephalas lived in the reign of Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus (911-959), who had a passion for art and literature, and is known to have ordered the compilation of books of excerpts. Gibbon gives an account of the revival of learning which took place under his influence, and of the relations of his Court with that of the Western Empire of Otto the Great.

The arrangement in the Anthology of Cephalas is founded on that of Agathias. But alongside of the arrangement under subjects we frequently find strings of epigrams by the same author with no particular connection in subject, which are obviously transcribed directly from a collected edition of his poems.

Maximus Planudes, theologian, grammarian, and rhetorician, lived in the early part of the fourteenth century; in 1327 he was appointed ambassador to the Venetian Republic by Andronicus II. Among his works were translations into Greek of Augustine's City of God and Caesar's Gallic War. The restored Greek Empire of the Palaeologi was then fast dropping to pieces. The Genoese colony of Pera usurped the trade of Constantinople and acted as an independent state; and it brings us very near the modern world to remember that while Planudes was the contemporary of Petrarch and Doria, Andronicus III., the grandson and successor of Andronicus II., was married, as a suitable match, to Agnes of Brunswick, and again after her death to Anne of Savoy.

Planudes made a new Anthology in seven books, founded on that of Cephalas, but with many alterations and omissions. Each book is divided into chapters which are arranged alphabetically by subject, with the exception of the seventh book, consisting of amatory epigrams, which is not subdivided. In a prefatory note to this book he says he has omitted all indecent or unseemly epigrams, {polla en to antigrapso onta}. This {antograpso} was the Anthology of Cephalas. The contents of the different books are as follows:

Book I.—{Epideiktika}, in ninety-one chapters; from the {Epideiktika} of Cephalas, with additions from his {Anathematika} and {Protreptika}, and twelve new epigrams on statues.
Book II.—{Skoptika}, in fifty-three chapters; from the {Sumpotika kai Skoptika} and the {Mousa Stratonos} of Cephalas, with six new epigrams.
Book III.—{Epitumbia}, in thirty-two chapters; from the {Epitumbia} of Cephalas, which are often transcribed in the original order, with thirteen new epigrams.
Book IV.—Epigrams on monuments, statues, animals, and places, in thirty-three chapters; some from the {Epideiktika} of Cephalas, but for the greater part new.
Book V.—Christodorus' description of the statues in the gymnasium called Zeuxippus, and a collection of epigrams in the Hippodrome at Constantinople; from appendices to the Anthology of Cephalas.
Book VI.—{Anathematika}, in twenty-seven chapters; from the {Anathematika} of Cephalas, with four new epigrams.