CH ARLES LEONARD-STUART, Author of The Great God Pan,' etc. GREEK ANTHOLOGY, The. An thology is a ((collection of flowers." The Greek Anthology,' often referred to as the Palatine Anthology, is a collection of epigrams and epigrammatic poems, very few of which exceed 12 lines, and more than nine-tenths of which are written in the alternation of hexameter and pentameter known as the elegiac metre. They number about 4,100, represent a period of some 1,700 years, and comprise a variety of subject matter as wide as life itself. Their perfection of form and their exceedingly human content have made them a favorite field for the trans lator, the lover of poetry and the critic of life. Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Gray, Dr. Johnson, Cowper, Chenier, Sainte-Beuve, Byron and Longfellow are a few among those who have found them es pecially attractive. The Greek Anthology is a growth, the result of selection, con tribution and arrangement by a number of successive hands. (1) Meleager, a Syrian of the early 1st century before Christ, made the first collection of importance in his 'Wreath,' or 'Garland.' Besides poems of his own numbering about a hundred, the 'Garland' contained epigrams by 47 other poets, 33 of whom belonged to the period of literary clever ness and artificiality (300-146 a.c.) called Alex andrian from the principal seat of learned and literary endeavor during the time. It was Meleager's identification, in the Proem of his collection, of the verses of various poets with various flowers ("lilies" of Anyte, uroses" of Sappho, etc.) that gave the name (Garland' its appropriateness, and suggested the later term Anthology. (2) Philippus of Thessalonica, more than a century afterward, made a com pilation of the epigrammatic poets since Meleager. (3) Strato of Sardis collected some hundreds of amatory epigrams, including many by himself. (4) Agathias, a poet and historian at Constantinople in the time of Justinian (527 565), collected seven books of hitherto unpub lished recent and contemporary epigrams, among which were his own. The method of classifi
cation according to subject — humorous, ama tory, convivial, etc. — adopted by him perhaps for the first time, has usually been followed since. (5) Constantinus Cephalas, probably of Constantinople about 950, compiled a still more extensive collection, based upon and presumably incorporating principally those of Meleager and Agathias, and representing 320 poets. He broke up the Garland of Meleager, according to a commentator, and "distributed it under different heads, viz., the amatory, dedicatory, sepulchral, and illustrative pieces separately, as they are now arranged below in this book." (6) Maximus Planudes, monk, theologian, gram marian and rhetorician of the early 14th cen tury, ambassador from Constantinople to Venice in 1327, included in a new collection of seven books 397 epigrams not in Cephalas, but also made many damaging alterations and omis sions. Having superseded and caused to dis appear the anthology of Cephalas, for 112 years from its first printing in Florence in 1484 the collection of Planudes remained the only anthol ogy known. In 1606, however, the discovery by Salmasius of the famous Palatine Manu script of Cenhalas (so called from its location in the Palatine Library at Heidelberg) re stored the better collection, which, with the 397 additional epigrams from the Planudean col lection, has formed the material for all subse quent editions. Extracts by Salmasius and others gave place in 1776 to Brunck's