Book VII.—{Erotika}; from the {Erotika} of Cephalas, with twenty-six new epigrams.
Obviously then the Anthology of Planudes was almost wholly taken from that of Cephalas, with the exception of epigrams on works of art, which are conspicuously absent from the earlier collection as we possess it. As to these there is only one conclusion. It is impossible to account for Cephalas having deliberately omitted this class of epigrams; it is impossible to account for their re-appearance in Planudes, except on the supposition that we have lost a section of the earlier Anthology which included them. The Planudean Anthology contains in all three hundred and ninety-seven epigrams, which are not in the Palatine MS. of Cephalas. It is in these that its principal value lies. The vitiated taste of the period selected later and worse in preference to earlier and better epigrams; the compilation was made carelessly and, it would seem, hurriedly, the earlier part of the sections of Cephalas being largely transcribed and the latter part much less fully, as though the editor had been pressed for time or lost interest in the work as he went on. Not only so, but he mutilated the text freely, and made sweeping conjectural restorations where it was imperfect. The discrepancies too in the authorship assigned to epigrams are so frequent and so striking that they can only be explained by great carelessness in transcription; especially as internal evidence where it can be applied almost uniformly supports the headings of the Palatine Anthology.
Such as it was, however, the Anthology of Planudes displaced that of Cephalas almost at once, and remained the only MS. source of the anthology until the seventeenth century. The other entirely disappeared, unless a copy of it was the manuscript belonging to Angelo Colloti, seen and mentioned by the Roman scholar and antiquarian Fulvio Orsini (b. 1529, d. 1600) about the middle of the sixteenth century, and then again lost to view. The Planudean Anthology was first printed at Florence in 1484 by the Greek scholar, Janus Lascaris, from a good MS. It continued to be reprinted from time to time, the last edition being the five sumptuous quarto volumes issued from the press of Wild and Altheer at Utrecht, 1795-1822.
In the winter of 1606-7, Salmasius, then a boy of eighteen but already an accomplished scholar, discovered a manuscript of the Anthology of Cephalas in the library of the Counts Palatine at Heidelberg. He copied from it the epigrams hitherto unknown, and these began to be circulated in manuscript under the name of the Anthologia Inedita. The intention he repeatedly expressed of editing the whole work was never carried into effect. In 1623, on the capture of Heidelberg by the Archduke Maximilian of Bavaria in the Thirty Years' War, this with many other MSS. and books was sent by him to Rome as a present to Pope Gregory XV., and was placed in the Vatican Library. It remained there till it was taken to Paris by order of the French Directory in 1797, and was restored to the Palatine Library after the end of the war.
The description of this celebrated manuscript, the Codex Palatinus or Vaticanus, as it has been named from the different places of its abode, is as follows: it is a long quarto, on parchment, of 710 pages, together with a page of contents and three other pages glued on at the beginning. There are three hands in it. The table of contents and pages 1-452 and 645-704 in the body of the MS. are in a hand of the eleventh century; the middle of the MS., pages 453-644, is in a later hand; and a third, later than both, has written the last six pages and the three odd pages at the beginning, has added a few epigrams in blank spaces, and has made corrections throughout the MS.
The index, which is of great importance towards the history not only of the MS. but of the Anthology generally, runs as follows:—
{Tade enestin en tede te biblo ton epigrammaton
A. Nonnou poirtou Panopolitou ekphrasis tou kata Ioannen agiou
euaggeliou.
B. Paulou poirtou selantiariou (sic) uiou Kurou ekphrasis eis ten
megalen ekklesian ete ten agian Sophian.
G. Sullogai epigrammaton Khristianikon eis te naous kai eikonas kai
eis diaphora anathemata.
D. Khristodorou poietou Thebaiou ekphrasis ton agalmaton ton eis to
demosion gumnasion tou epikaloumenou Zeuxippou.
E. Meleagou poietou Palaistinou stephanos diaphoron epigrammaton.
S. Philippou poietou Thessalonikeos stephanos omoios diaphoron
epigrammaton.
Z. Agathiou skholastikou Asianou Murenaiou sulloge neon epigrammaton
ektethenton en Konstantinoupolei pros Theodoron Dekouriona. esti
de e taxis ton epigrammaton egoun diairesis outos.
a. prote men e ton Khristianon.
b. deutera de e ta Khristodorou periekhousa tou Thebaiou.
g. trete (sic) de arkhen men ekhousa ten ton erotikon epigrammaton
upothesin.
d. e ton anathematikon.
e. pempte e ton epitumbion.
s. e ton epideiktikon.
z. ebdome e ton pretreptikon.
e. e ton skoptikon.
th. ebdome e ton protreptikon.
i. diaphoron metron diaphora epigrammata.
ia. arithmetika kai grepha summikta.
ib. Ioannou grammatikou Gazes ekphrasis tou kosmikou pinakos tou en
kheimerio loutro.
ig. Surigx Theokritou kai pteruges Simmiou Dosiada bomos Besantinou
oon kai pelekus.
id. Anakreontos Teiou Sumposiaka emiambia kai Anakreontia kai
trimetra.
ie. Tou agiou Gregoriou tou theologou ek ton epon eklogai diaphorai
en ois kai ta Arethou kai Anastasiou kai Ignatiou kai
Konstantinou kai Theophanous keintai epigrammata.}
This index must have been transcribed from the index of an earlier MS. It differs from the actual contents of the MS. in the following respects:—
The hexameter paraphrase of S. John's Gospel by Nonnus is not in the
MS., having perhaps been torn off from the beginning of it.