Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology

by Unknown

[7] Ibid. 469.

IV

From the invention of writing onwards, the inscriptions on monuments and dedicated offerings supplied one of the chief materials of historical record. Their testimony was used by the earliest historians to supplement and reinforce the oral traditions which they embodied in their works. Herodotus and Thucydides quote early epigrams as authority for the history of past times;[1] and when in the latter part of the fourth century B.C. history became a serious study throughout Greece, collections of inscribed records, whether in prose or verse, began to be formed as historical material. The earliest collection of which anything is certainly known was a work by Philochorus,[2] a distinguished Athenian antiquary who flourished about 300 B.C., entitled Epigramma Attica. It appears to have been a transcript of all the ancient Attic inscriptions dealing with Athenian history, and would include the verses engraved on the tombs of celebrated citizens, or on objects dedicated in the temples on public occasions. A century later, we hear of a work by Polemo, called Periegetes, or the "Guidebook-maker," entitled {peri ton xata poleis epigrammaton}.[3] This was an attempt to make a similar collection of inscriptions throughout the cities of Greece. Athenaeus also speaks of authors otherwise unknown, Alcetas and Menetor,[4] as having written treatises {peri anathematon}, which would be collections of the same nature confined to dedicatory inscriptions; and, these being as a rule in verse, the books in question were perhaps the earliest collections of monumental poetry. Even less is known with regard to a book "on epigrams" by Neoptolemus of Paris.[5] The history of Anthologies proper begins for us with Meleager of Gadara.

The collection called the Garland of Meleager, which is the basis of the Greek Anthology as we possess it, was formed by him in the early part of the first century B.C. The scholiast on the Palatine MS. says that Meleager flourished in the reign of the last Seleucus ({ekhmasen epi Seleukou tou eskhatou}). This is Seleucus VI. Epiphanes, the last king of the name, who reigned B.C. 95-93; for it is not probable that the reference is to the last Seleucid, Antiochus XIII., who acceded B.C. 69, and was deposed by Pompey when he made Syria a Roman province in B.C. 65. The date thus fixed is confirmed by the fact that the collection included an epigram on the tomb of Antipater of Sidon,[6] who, from the terms in which Cicero alludes to him, must have lived till 110 or even 100 B.C., and that it did not include any of the epigrams of Meleager's townsman Philodemus of Gadara, the friend of L. Calpurnius Piso, consul in B.C. 58.

This Garland or Anthology has only come down to us as forming the basis of later collections. But the prefatory poem which Meleager wrote for it has fortunately been preserved, and gives us valuable information as to the contents of the Garland. This poem,[7] in which he dedicates his work to his friend or patron Diocles, gives the names of forty-seven poets included by him besides many others of recent times whom he does not specifically enumerate. It runs as follows:

"Dear Muse, for whom bringest thou this gardenful of song, or who is he that fashioned the garland of poets? Meleager made it, and wrought out this gift as a remembrance for noble Diocles, inweaving many lilies of Anyte, and many martagons of Moero, and of Sappho little, but all roses, and the narcissus of Melanippides budding into clear hymns, and the fresh shoot of the vine-blossom of Simonides; twining to mingle therewith the spice-scented flowering iris of Nossis, on whose tablets love melted the wax, and with her, margerain from sweet- breathed Rhianus, and the delicious maiden-fleshed crocus of Erinna, and the hyacinth of Alcaeus, vocal among the poets, and the dark- leaved laurel-spray of Samius, and withal the rich ivy-clusters of Leonidas, and the tresses of Mnasalcas' sharp pine; and he plucked the spreading plane of the song of Pamphilus, woven together with the walnut shoots of Pancrates and the fair-foliaged white poplar of Tymnes, and the green mint of Nicias, and the horn-poppy of Euphemus growing on these sands; and with these Damagetas, a dark violet, and the sweet myrtle-berry of Callimachus, ever full of pungent honey, and the rose-campion of Euphorion, and the cyclamen of the Muses, him who had his surname from the Dioscori. And with him he inwove Hegesippus, a riotous grape-cluster, and mowed down the scented rush of Perses; and withal the quince from the branches of Diotimus, and the first pomegranate flowers of Menecrates, and the myrrh-twigs of Nicaenetus, and the terebinth of Phaennus, and the tall wild pear of Simmias, and among them also a few flowers of Parthenis, plucked from the blameless parsley-meadow, and fruitful remnants from the honey-dropping Muses, yellow ears from the corn-blade of Bacchylides; and withal Anacreon, both that sweet song of his and his nectarous elegies, unsown honey- suckle; and withal the thorn-blossom of Archilochus from a tangled brake, little drops from the ocean; and with them the young olive- shoots of Alexander, and the dark-blue cornflower of Polycleitus; and among them he laid amaracus, Polystratus the flower of songs, and the young Phoenician cypress of Antipater, and also set therein spiked Syrian nard, the poet who sang of himself as Hermes' gift; and withal Posidippus and Hedylus together, wild blossoms of the country, and the blowing windflowers of the son of Sicelides; yea, and set therein the golden bough of the ever divine Plato, shining everywhere in excellence, and beside him Aratus the knower of the stars, cutting the first-born spires of that heaven-high palm, and the fair-tressed lotus of Chaeremon mixed with the gilliflower of Phaedimus, and the round ox-eye of Antagoras, and the wine-loving fresh-blown wild thyme of Theodorides, and the bean-blossoms of Phanias, and many newly- scriptured shoots of others; and with them also even from his own Muse some early white violets. But to my friends I give thanks; and the sweet-languaged garland of the Muses is common to all initiate."

In this list three poets are not spoken of directly by name, but, from metrical or other reasons, are alluded to paraphrastically. "He who had his surname from the Dioscori" is Dioscorides; "the poet who sang of himself as Hermes' gifts" is Hermodorus; and "the son of Sicelides" is Asclepiades, referred to under the same name by his great pupil Theocritus. The names of these forty-eight poets (including Meleager himself) show that the collection embraced epigrams of all periods from the earliest times up to his own day. Six belong to the early period of the lyric poets, ending with the Persian wars; Archilochus, who flourished about 700 B.C., Sappho and Erinna a century afterwards, Simonides and Anacreon about 500 B.C., and a little later, Bacchylides. Five more belong to the fourth century B.C., the period which begins with the destruction of the Athenian empire and ends with the establishment of the Macedonian kingdoms of the Diadochi. Of these, Plato is still within the Athenian period; Hegesippus, Simmias, Anyte, and Phaedimus, all towards the end of the century, mark the beginning of the Alexandrian period. Four have completely disappeared out of the Anthology as we possess it; Melanippides, a celebrated writer of dithyrambic poetry in the latter half of the fifth century B.C., of which a few fragments survive, and Euphemus, Parthenis, and Polycleitus, of whom nothing whatever is known. The remaining thirty- three poets in Meleager's list all belong to the Alexandrian period, and bring the series down continuously to Meleager himself.

One of the epigrams in the Anthology of Strato[8] professes to be the colophon {xoronis} to Meleager's collection; but it is a stupid and clumsy forgery of an obviously later date, probably by Strato himself, or some contemporary, and is not worth quoting. The proem to the Garland is a work of great ingenuity, and contains in single words and phrases many exquisite criticisms. The phrase used of Sappho has become proverbial; hardly less true and pointed are those on Erinna, Callimachus, and Plato. All the flowers are carefully and appropriately chosen with reference to their poets, and the whole is done with the light and sure touch of a critic who is also a poet himself.

A scholiast on the Palatine MS. says that Meleager's Anthology was arranged in alphabetical order {xata stoikheion}. This seems to mean alphabetical order of epigrams, not of authors; and the statement is borne out by some parts of the Palatine and even of the Planudean Anthologies, where, in spite of the rearrangement under subjects, traces of alphabetical arrangement among the older epigrams are still visible. The words of the scholiast imply that there was no further arrangement by subject. It seems most reasonable to suppose that the epigrams of each author were placed together; but of this there is no direct evidence, nor can any such arrangement be certainly inferred from the state of the existing Anthologies.

The Scholiast, in this same passage, speaks of Meleager's collection as an {epigrammaton stephanos}, and obviously it consisted in the main of epigrams according to the ordinary definition. But it is curious that Meleager himself nowhere uses the word; and from some phrases in the proem it is difficult to avoid the inference that he included other kinds of minor poetry as well. Too much stress need not be laid on the words {umnos} and {aoide}, which in one form or another are repeatedly used by him; though it is difficult to suppose that "the hymns of Melanippides", who is known to have been a dithyrambic poet, can mean not hymns but epigrams.[9] But where Anacreon is mentioned, his {melisma} and his elegiac pieces are unmistakably distinguished from each other, and are said to be both included; and this {melisma} must mean lyric poetry of some kind, probably the very hemiambics under the name of Anacreon which are extant as an appendix to the Palatine MS. Meleager's Anthology also pretty certainly included his own Song of Spring,[10] which is a hexameter poem, though but for the form of verse it might just come within a loose definition of an epigram. Whether it included idyllic poems like the Amor Fugitivus of Moschus[11] it is not possible to determine.