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ANTHOLOGY 100.00%
(-garland of flowers). The Greek word anthologia means a collection of short, especially epigrammatic poems, by various authors; we still possess one such collection dating from antiquity. Collections of inscriptions in verse had more than once been set on foot in early times for antiquarian purposes. The first regular anthology, entitled Stephanos (- wreath), was attempted by Meleager of Gadara in the 1st century B.C.; it contained, beside his own compositions, poems arranged according to their initial letters, by forty-six contemporary and older authors, including Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho, Anacreon, Simonides, etc., together with a prologue still extant. This collection was enriched, about 100 A.D., by Philippus of Thessalonica, with select epigrams by about thirteen later authors. Other collections were undertaken soon after by Diogenianus of Heracleia and Straton of Sardis, and in the 6th century by Agathias of Myrina, in whose Kyklos the poems are for the first time arranged according to subjects. Out of these collections, now all lost, Constantinus Cephalas of Constantinople, in the 10th century, put together a new and comprehensive anthology, classified according to contents in fifteen sections. From this collection the monk Maximus Planudes, in the 14th century, made an extract of seven books, which was the only one known till the year 1606. In that year the French scholar Saumaise (Salmasius) discovered in the Palatine Library at Heidelberg a complete manuscript of the anthology of Constantinus Cephalas with sundry additions. This MS., with all the other treasures of the library, was carried off to Rome in 1623, whence it was taken to Paris in 1793, and back to Heidelberg in 1816. The epigrams of the Greek anthology, dating as they do from widely distant ages down to the Byzantine, and being the production of more than three hundred different authors, are of very various merit; but many of them are among the pearls of Greek poetry, and could hardly have survived unless enshrined in such a collection. Taken together with the rich store of epigrams found in inscriptions, the Anthology opens to us a view of the development of this branch of Greek literature such as we can scarcely obtain in the case of any other, besides affording valuable information on Hellenic language, history, and manners, at the most different periods. Roman literature has no really ancient collection of so comprehensive a character, the so-called Latin Anthology having been gathered by modern scholars out of the material found scattered in various MSS. Among these, it is true, Saumaise's MS. of the 7th century, now in Paris, has a collection of about 380 poems, but these, with a few exceptions, are of very late authorship.
 
ORION 78.38%
A Greek scholar born at Thebes in Egypt, who taught about the middle of the 5th century A.D. at Alexandria and Constantinople. He is the author of a somewhat important etymological lexicon, and an anthology of maxims collected from the old Greek poets.
 
ASCLEPIADES 73.67%
A Greek poet, a native of Samos, and a younger contemporary of Theocritus. He was the author of thirty-nine Epigrams, mostly erotic, in the Greek Anthology. The well-known Asclepiadean Metre was perhaps named after him.
 
MELEAGER 63.71%
Greek epigrammatist. Of Gadara in Palestine, flourished about B.C. 60. His collection of epigrams, by himself and others, entitled Stephanos (wreath), formed the nucleus of the Greek anthology (q.v.), Of his own poems there remain 128, in which amatory themes are cleverly and wittily treated.
 
EPIGRAM 60.21%

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Properly = an inscription, such as was often written upon a tomb, a votive offering, a present, a work of art, and the like, to describe its character. Inscriptions of this sort were from early times put into metrical form, and the writer generally tried to put good sense and spirit into them. They were generally, though not always, written in the elegiac metre. The greatest master of epigram was Simonides of Ceos, the author of almost all the sepulchral inscriptions on the warriors who fell in the Persian wars. His lines are remarkable for repose, clearness, and force, both of thought and expression. Fictitious inscriptions were often written, containing brief criticisms on celebrated men, as poets, philosophers, artists and their productions. The form of the epigram was also used to embody in concise and pointed language the clever ideas, or the passing moods of the writer, often with a tinge of wit or satire. The occasional epigram was a very favourite form of composition with the Alexandrian poets, and remained so down to the latest. times. Some writers, indeed, devoted themselves entirely to it. Many of the choicest gems of Greek literature are to be found in the epigrams. The epigrammatists used other metres besides the elegiac, especially the iambic. In later times more complex and almost lyrical measures were employed. The Greek Anthology has preserved 4,500 epigrams, of the greatest variety in contents, and from the hand of more than 300 poets. (See ANTHOLOGY). Among these are found some of the most celebrated names of ancient and of later times. A great number, too, are found in inscriptions. Of all the Greek varieties of lyric poetry, the epigram was earliest welcomed at Rome. It lived on in an uninterrupted existence from Ennius till the latest times, being employed sometimes for inscriptions, sometimes for other and miscellaneous purposes. In the second half of the 1st century A.D. Martial handled it in various forms and with the power of a master. We also have a collection of epigrams by Luxorius (6th century A.D.). Many of such poems are preserved on inscriptions, besides a great quantity in manuscript, which in modern times have been collected into a Latin Anthology.
 
AGATHIAS 57.18%
Of Myrina in Asia Minor, Greek poet and historian, born about 530 A.D., lived at Constantinople as a jurist,.and died about 582. By his Kyklos, a collection of his own and contemporary poems, topically arranged in eight books, he helped to originate the Greek ANTHOLOGY (q.v.), which still contains 101 epigrams by him. In his last years he wrote, in a laboured florid style, a history of Justinian in five books, treating of the years A.D. 552-8 in continuation of Procopius.
 
SOSITHEUS 51.55%
Of Alexandria in the Troad; a Greek tragedian, one of the Alexandrine <italis>Pleids (q.v.). He lived in the first half of the 3rd century B.C., in Athens and in Alexandria in Egypt. In an epigram of the Greek Anthology [vii 707] he is celebrated as the restorer of the satyric drama. We still possess an interesting fragment of his satyric plays, the Daphnis [twenty-one lines in Nauck's <italisc>Tragicorum Gr. Fragm., p. 822, ed. 1889].
 
STOBAEUS 44.09%
Of Stobi in Macedonia. About 500 A.D. he composed, for the education of his son Septimius, a philosophical anthology in four books, from the extracts which he had made in the course of his extensive reading from more than 500 Greek poets and prose writers. It is of great value, as it includes numerous fragments of works now lost, and is particularly rich in quotations from the works of the Greek dramatists. The collection, which originally seems to have formed one whole work, has been separated into two distinct portions in the course of time: (1) The "physical, dialectical, and ethical eclogues" (or selections) in two books (imperfect at the beginning and end); and (2) the Florilegium, also in two books, on ethical and political subjects, the sections of which are in great part so arranged that each virtue is treated in connexion with its opposite vice.
 
MYRON 33.12%
 
MENANDER 24.79%
The chief representative of the Later Attic Comedy, born in B.C. 342, at Athens, of a distinguished and wealthy family. He received a careful education, and led a comfortable and luxurious life, partly at Athens, and partly at his estate in the Piraeus, the harbour of Athens, enjoying the intimate friendship of his contemporary and the friend of his youth, Epicurus, of Theophrastus, and of Demetrius Phalereus. He declined an invitation of king Ptolemy I of Egypt, so as not to have his comfort disturbed. At the height of his poetic productiveness he was drowned while bathing in the Piraeus, at the age of 52. His uncle Alexis had given him some preparatory training in dramatic composition. As early as 322 he made his first appearance as an author. He wrote above a hundred pieces, and worked with the greatest facility; but he only obtained the first prize for eight comedies, in the competition with his popular rival Philemon. The admiration accorded him by posterity was all the greater: there was only one opinion about the excellence of his work. His principal merits were remarkable inventiveness, skillful arrangement of plots, life-like painting of character, a clever and refined wit, elegant and graceful language, and a copious supply of maxims based on a profound knowledge of the world. These last were collected in regular anthologies and form the bulk of the extant fragments. Unfortunately not one of his plays has survived, although they were much read down to a late date. However, apart from about seventy-three titles, and numerous fragments (some of considerable length), we have transcripts of his comedies (in which, of course, the delicate beauties of the original are lost), in a number of Latin plays by Plautus (Bacchides, Stichus, Poenulus), and Terence (Andria, Eunuchus, Hautontimorumenos, Adelphi). Lucian also, in his Conversations of Hetoeroe, and Alciphron in his Letters, have made frequent use of Menander.
 
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