Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology | Page 9

passages from continuous poems, selected, at least in the case of Theognis, for an Anthology of his works.
The epigrams extant in literature which are not in the Anthology are, with a few exceptions, collected in the appendix to the edition of Jacobs, and are reprinted from it in modern texts. They are about four hundred in number, and raise the total number of epigrams in the Anthology to about four thousand five hundred; to these must be added at least a thousand inscriptional epigrams, which increase year by year as new explorations are carried on. It is, of course, but seldom that these last have distinct value as poetry. Those of the best period, indeed, and here the best period is the sixth century B.C., have always a certain accent, even when simplest and most matter of fact, which reminds us of the palace whence they came. Their simplicity is more thrilling than any eloquence. From the exotic and elaborate word-embroidery of the poets of the decadence, we turn with relief and delight to work like this, by a father over his son:
{Sema pater Kleoboulos apepsthimeno Xenopsanto?thexe tod ant aretes ede saopsrosunes}[6]
(This monument to dead Xenophantus his father Cleobulus set up, for his valour and wisdom);
or this, on an unmarried girl:
{Sema PHrasixleias xoure xexlesomai aiei?anti gamou para theon touto lakhous onoma}[7]
(The monument of Phrasicleia; I shall for ever be called maiden, having got this name from the gods instead of marriage.)
So touching in their stately reserve, so piercing in their delicate austerity, these epitaphs are in a sense the perfection of literature, and yet in another sense almost lie outside its limits. For the workmanship here, we feel, is unconscious; and without conscious workmanship there is not art. In Homer, in Sophocles, in all the best Greek work, there is this divine simplicity; but beyond it, or rather beneath it and sustaining it, there is purpose.

[1] Anth. Pal. vii. 249; Hdt. vii. 228.
[2] Ibid. vii. 256.
[3] Epigrammata Graeca ex lapidibus conlecta. Berlin, 1878.
[4] Infra, III. 35, 47; XI. 48.
[5] Infra, XII. 6, 17, 37.
[6] Corp. Inscr. Att. 477 B.
[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