Anthology

ANTHOLOGY, a term literally denoting a garland or col lection of flowers (Gr. avOoXo'yia, Lat. florilegium), hence a collection of short pieces or extracts, especially in verse, and in particular : The Greek Anthology.—The art of occasional poetry had been cultivated in Greece from an early period, especially for short inscriptions (epigrammata) of all kinds. These must neces sarily be brief, and Greek taste prescribed that they should also be well expressed and pointed. The term epigram was scon extended to any piece by which these conditions were fulfilled, and the favourite metre for such compositions was the elegiac couplet. The transition from the monumental to the purely literary epigram was favoured by the conditions of the Alexandrian era (see ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL). About 6o B.C. the sophist and poet, Meleager of Gadara, made an important collection, drawing on various earlier ones. This he entitled The Garland, and in an introductory poem each poet is compared to some flower. The arrangement of his collection was alphabetical, according to the initial letter of each epigram.

In the age of the emperor Tiberius (or Trajan, according to others) the work of Meleager was continued by another epi grammatist, Philippus of Thessalonica, who first employed the term anthologia. His collection, which included the compositions of thirteen writers subsequent to Meleager, was also arranged alphabetically, and contained an introductory poem. Somewhat later, under Hadrian, another supplement was formed by the sophist Diogenianus of Heracleia (2nd century A.D.), and Straton of Sardis compiled or composed his Moira IIat&oci, Musa Puer ilis. No further collection is recorded until the time of Justinian, when epigrammatic writing experienced a great revival at the hands of Agathias of Myrina, the historian, Paulus Silentiarius, and other classicizers. Agathias then drew up a new anthology, entitled The Circle; it was the first to be divided into books and arranged with reference to the subjects of the pieces.

These, and other collections made during the middle ages, are now lost. The partial incorporation of them into a single body, classified according to the contents in 15 books, was the work of a certain Constantinus Cephalas, (before 917). He appears merely to have made excerpts from the existing an thologies, with the addition of selections from Lucillius, Palladas, and other epigrammatists, whose compositions had been published separately. His arrangement, to which further reference will be made, is founded on a principle of classification, and nearly corresponds to that adopted by Agathias. This collection more or less corresponds to the contents of a ms. formerly the property of the Elector Palatine, now partly at Heidelberg, partly at Paris. It is often called the Palatine Anthology. The last anthology is the Planudean, named after its editor, Maximus Planudes (132o), who not merely grievously mutilated the anthology of Cephalas by omissions, but disfigured it by interpolating verses of his own. We are, however, indebted to him for the preservation of the epigrams on works of art, which seem to have been accidentally omitted from the Palatine ms.

The Planudean anthology (in seven books) was first published at Florence, by Janus Lascaris, in 1494. It long continued to be the only accessible collection, for although the Palatine ms. was dis covered and copied by Saurnaise (Salmasius) in 1696, it was not published until 1776, in Brunck's Analecta Veterum Poetarum Grae corum. Brunck's edition was superseded by that of Friedrich Jacobs (1794-1814, 13 vols.) , the text of which was reprinted in a more convenient form in 1813-17. The best edition for general purposes is still that of Diibner and Cougy (Didot, 1864-92 ; 3 vols.), which contains the Palatine Anthology, the epigrams of the Planudean anthology not comprised in the former, an appendix of pieces derived from other sources, notes, and Latin versions. The best edition of the Planudean anthology is the splendid one by van Bosch and van Lennep (1795-1822). There is also an incomplete text by Stadtmuller in the Teubner series.

Palatine ms., the archetype of the pres ent text, was transcribed by different persons at different times, and the actual arrangement of the collection does not correspond with that signalized in the index. It is as follows: Book 1. Christian epigrams ; 2. Christodorus's description of certain stat ues; 3. Inscriptions in the temple at Cyzicus; 4. The prefaces of Meleager, Philippus, and Agathias to their respective collec tions; 5. Amatory epigrams; 6. Votive inscriptions; 7. Epitaphs; 8. The epigrams of Gregory Nazianzen; g. Rhetorical and illus trative epigrams; io. Ethical pieces; 11. Humorous and con vivial; 12. Strato's Musa Puerilis; 13. Metrical curiosities; 14. Puzzles, enigmas, oracles; 15. Miscellanies. The epigrams on works of art, as already stated, are missing from the Codex Pala tinus, and must be sought in an appendix of epigrams only occur ring in the Planudean anthology.

Style and Value.

One of the principal claims of the an thology to attention is derived from its continuity, its existence as a living and growing body of poetry throughout all the vicissi tudes of Greek civilization. Four stages may be indicated :- I. The Hellenic proper, of which Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-46q B.c.), the real or supposed author of most of the sepulchral in scriptions on those who fell in the Persian wars, is the character istic representative. This is characterized by simple but impres sive phraseology, suited to a real inscription. 2. The Alexandrian era, when epitaphs and votive inscriptions were composed on subjects often imaginary. Point, wit, and ingenuity—in short, the qualities we call epigrammatic—often joined to genuine emo tion, mark these compositions. The great exponents are Calli machus, Leonidas of Tarentum, a contemporary of Pyrrhus, and. later, Antipater of Sidon, about 140 B.C. 3. The later Hellenistic, or Roman period, of which Meleager himself is an excellent representative. A less severe taste in style, occasional grossness in subject, and a lavish, often very happy, use of epithet mark him and his imitators. At a later period of the empire another genre, hitherto comparatively in abeyance, was developed, the satirical. Lucillius, who flourished under Nero, and Lucian (per haps Lucian of Samosata) have left us a number of witty lampoons and pasquinades on persons real or imaginary. Palladas, an Alexandrian grammarian of the 4th century, may be taken as closing this epoch. 4. The fourth or Byzantine style of epigram matic composition was cultivated by the beaux-esprits of the court of Justinian. To a great extent this is merely imitative, but the circumstances of the period operated so as to produce a species of originality. The writers, moreover, were men of genuine poetical feeling, ingenious in invention, and capable of expressing emotion with energy and liveliness; the colouring of their pieces is sometimes highly dramatic.

While it contains a certain amount of dull, puerile, or indecent trash, mostly late, the value of the Greek Anthology is high on the whole, both as literature and for the light it throws on Greek life, thought, and feeling during some 1900 years. Its influence on modern European literatures is enormous.

Translations, Imitations, etc.

The best versions of the Anthology ever made are the Latin renderings of select epigrams by Hugo Grotius. They are most easily accessible in the Didot edition and in Dr. Wellesley's Anthologia Polyglotta (1849). The best literal and complete English translation is that in the Loeb series (W. R. Paton) ; a few pieces, however, are rendered into Latin, for obvious reasons. Of selections with prose or verse translations may be mentioned J. W. Mackail, Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, revised 1906; Graham R. Tomson (Mrs. Marriott Watson), Selections from the Greek Anthology (1889) ; W. H. D. Rouse, Echo of Greek Song L. C. Perry, From the Garden of Hellas (New York, 1891) ; W. R. Paton, Love Epigrams (1808) ; H. Macnaughten, Little Master pieces from the Anthology (1924) ; Humbert Wolfe, Others Abide For critical discussion besides the histories of Greek literature, we may mention J. A. Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets (3rd ed., 1893).

The Latin Anthology.

A modern collection of fugitive Latin verse, from the age of Ennius to about A.D. Nothing corresponding to the Greek Anthology is known to have existed among the Romans. The first general collection was Scaliger's Catalecta veterum Poetarum , succeeded by the more ample one of Pithoeus, Epigrammata et Poemata e Codicibus et Lapidibus collecta (1J9o). Numerous additions, principally from inscriptions, continued to be made, and in 1759-73 Burmann digested the whole into his Anthologia veterum Latinorum Epi grammatum et Poematum. This, occasionally reprinted, was the standard edition until 1869, when Alexander Riese commenced a new and more critical recension. The first volume (in two parts) appeared in 1869-70; the second volume, Carmina Epigraph ica (in two parts), in 1895-97, edited by Bucheler. An An thologiae Latinae Supplementa, in the same series, followed. A new edition (Riese-Bucheler-Lommatzsch: Teubner 1894-1926) has now replaced it. (R. G.; H. J. R.) Modern Anthologies.—The representative modern anthol ogy is, in intention at least, a critical selection designed to give the reader the very best in the verse or prose of a particular literature; the earlier, however, are mostly miscellanies with less critical ambition, like the numerous English compilations of the 16th and early 17th centuries. Among the most notable of these last are: Tottel's Miscellany (1557), rich in Wyatt and Surrey; The Paradise of Dainty Devices (15 76) ; The Phoenix Nest (1593), containing a dozen till then unpublished pieces by Lodge; the popular ill-selected England's Parnassus (1600) ; England's Helicon (1602), representing Sidney, Spenser, Greene among others; Davison's Poetical Rhapsody (1602). Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) had an immense influence on the poets of the next generation, and Allan Ramsay's Tea-table Mis cellany (1724-40) gave Burns models. Later selections of verse include Southey's Select Works of the British Poets (1831) ; Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets (1841) ; F. T. Pal grave's Golden Treasury a classic; Locker-Lampson's Lyra Elegantiarum (1867, revised 1891) ; T. H. Ward's English Poets (1883) ; Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of English Verse (1900) ; W. B. Yeats's The Oxford Book of Modern Verse English prose has never been anthologized with great success, but the works, edited by Craik, Saintsbury, Galton, and Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of English Prase may be mentioned.

Noteworthy American anthologies include : The Columbian Muse ; Edmund Clarence Stedman, An American Anthology, 1787-1899 (Boston, 190o) ; Walter Cochrane Bronson, American Poems, 1625-1892 (Chicago, 1916) ; Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson, The New Poetry: An An thology (1917) ; Louis Untermeyer, Modern American Poetry (1919, revised and enlarged 1936) ; James Welden Johnson (ed.), The Book of American Negro Poetry (192 2) ; Marguerite Ogden Wilkinson, Contemporary Poetry (1923) ; Bliss Carman (ed.), The Oxford Book of American Verse (1927) ; Conrad Aiken, American Poetry (1929) ; Alfred Kreymborg, Lyric America (1930) ; Louis Untermeyer, American Poetry from the Beginning to Whitman (1931) ; H. H. Clark, Major American Poets (1936) .

Of foreign anthologies may be noted: For French, E. Crepet, Poetes francais (4 vols., i861), and G. Walch, Anthologie des poetes franfais contemporains (5 vols., 1906, etc.) ; for German, the works edited by Bartsch, Goedeke and Tiltmann (1867-83), H. Fiedler; for Italian, the works by Carducci and Mamiani; for Spanish, the anthologies of Menendez y Pelayo. Oriental anthologies are very numerous but mostly uncritical.