Greek Anthology

Greek Anthology a collection of short epigrammatic poems representing Greek literature from the 7th cent. BC to the 10th cent. AD It contains more than 6,000 poems on a variety of subjects by some 320 authors. Meleager compiled a collection of epigrams (which he called the Garland ) probably between 100 BC and 80 BC Later others made additions or new collections. Early in the 10th cent. Constantius Cephalas made a compilation that became the basis of the Palatine Anthology, so called because the sole manuscript was found in the library of the count Palatine in Heidelberg. In the first half of the 14th cent. a monk, Maximus Planudes, rearranged this collection, making additions and excluding many poems from the older compilation. The Planudes version was used until the Palatine Anthology was rediscovered in 1606. There are several good English translations, particularly those by J. W. Mackail (3d ed. 1911), W. R. Paton (with Greek texts, 5 vol., 1916-26), Dudley Fitts (rev. ed. 1956), and Peter Jay (1973).

Anthology, The Greek, a collection of some 3,700 epigrams (mostly short poems in elegiac couplets) by more than 300 writers, arranged in subject in 15 books; the subjects include Christian poems, sculpture, morality, homosexual love, and riddles. The anthology was prepared in c. ad 980 by a Byzantine scholar (or scholars) who augmented a collection of ancient epigrams assembled in the previous century with a large number of uncollected poems. The manuscript of the anthology was first discovered by Salmasius in the Palatine Library at Heidelberg in 1606. Modern editions of the Anthology contain a 16th book, which was assembled by the Byzantine monk Planudes in 1299; the Planudean anthology was published in 1494 and was widely read and imitated during the Renaissance.