|
Greek Anthology (also Anthologia Graeca) is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Ancient and Byzantine periods of Greek Literature. Poetry (ancient Greek: poieo = create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ...
An epigram is a short poem with a clever twist at the end or a concise and witty statement. ...
At the moment this page contains a list of links. ...
While papyri containing fragments of collections of poetry have been found in Egypt, the earliest known anthology in Greek was compiled by Meleager of Gadara, under the title Anthologia, or "Garland." It contained poems by the compiler himself and forty-six other poets, including Archilochus, Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Simonides. In his preface to his collection, Meleager describes his arrangement of poems as if it were a head-band or garland of flowers woven together in a tour de force that made the word "Anthology" a synonym for a collection of literary works for future generations. Papyrus plant Cyperus papyrus at Kew Gardens, London Papyrus is an early form of paper made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that grows to 5 meters (15 ft) in height and was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt. ...
Meleager of Gadara was a collector of epigrams active in the 1st century BCE. His work was the basis for the Greek Anthology. ...
Archilochus (or Archilochos) (ca. ...
Alcaeus may refer to several ancient Greek figures: in mythology, Alcaeus was the son of Perseus and the father of Amphitryon. ...
Anacreon roman copy , Rome in Palazzo dei Conservatori Anacreon (also Anakreon) (born ca. ...
Bold textil8jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjpooSimonides of Ceos (ca. ...
Meleager's Anthology was popular enough that it attracted later additions. Prefaces to the editions of Philip of Thessalonika and Agathias were preserved in the Greek Anthology to attest to their additions of later poems. The definitive edition was made by Constantine Cephalas in the tenth century AD, who added a number of other collections: homoerotic verse collected by Straton of Sardis in the second century AD; a collection of Christian epigrams found in churches; a collection of satirical and convivial epigrams collected by Diogenianus; Christodoros' description of statues in a Byzantine gymnasium; and a collection of inscriptions from a temple in Cyzicus. Agathias (c. ...
As a means of recording the passage of time, the 10th century was that century which lasted from 901 to 1000. ...
Homoeroticism refers to same-sex love and desire, most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature. ...
Straton of Sardis (aka Strato) was a Greek poet and anthologist from the Lydian city of Sardis. ...
The 2nd century is the period from 101 - 200 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian Era. ...
Christianity is a monotheistic[1] religion centered on Jesus of Nazareth, and on his life and teachings as presented in the New Testament. ...
Diogenianus, of Heraclea on the Pontus (or in Caria), Greek grammarian, flourished during the reign of Hadrian. ...
The gymnasium of the Greeks originally functioned as the school where competitors in the public games received their training, and was so named from the circumstance that these competitors exercised naked (gymnos). ...
Cyzicus was an ancient town of Mysia in Asia Minor, situated on the shoreward side of the present peninsula of Kapu-Dagh (Arctonnesus), which is said to have been originally an island in the Sea of Marmara, and to have been artificially connected with the mainland in historic times. ...
The scholar Maximus Planudes also made an edition of the Greek Anthology, which while adding some poems, primarily deleting or bowdlerizing many of the poems he felt were impure. His anthology was the only one known to Western Europe (his autograph copy, dated 1301 survives; the first edition based on his collection was printed in 1494) until 1606 when Claudius Salmasius found in the library at Heidelberg a fuller collection based on Cephalas. The copy made by Salmasius was not, however, published until 1776, when Richard François Philippe Brunck included it in his Analecta. The first critical edition was that of F. Jacobs (13 vols. 1794-1803; revised 1813-17). Maximus Planudes (c. ...
Thomas Bowdler (July 11, 1754 – February 24, 1825), an English physician, who published The Family Shakespeare, is best known as the source of the eponym bowdlerize (or bowdlerise[1]), the process of expurgation, censorship by removal, of material thought to be unacceptable to the intended audience, especially children or religious...
Events February 7 - Edward of Caernarvon (later King Edward II of England) becomes the first Prince of Wales End of the reign of Emperor Go-Fushimi, emperor of Japan Emperor Go-NijÅ ascends to the throne of Japan Dante was sent into Exile in Florence. ...
Claudius Salmasius is the Latin name of Claude Saumaise (April 15, 1588 - September 3, 1653), a French classical scholar. ...
Heidelberg is a scenic city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, halfway between Stuttgart and Frankfurt. ...
Richard François Philippe Brunck (December 30, 1729 - June 12, 1803), was a French classical scholar. ...
Since its transmission to the rest of Europe, the Greek Anthology has left a deep impression on its readers. In a 1971 article on Robin Skelton's translation of a selection of poems from the Anthology, a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement wrote, "The time of life does not exist when it is impossible to discover in it a masterly poem one had never seen before." Its influence can be seen on writers as diverse as Propertius, Ezra Pound and Edgar Lee Masters. Robin Skelton (October 12, 1925 –August 22, 1997) was a British-born academic, writer and poet, who lived in Canada from1963. ...
The Times Literary Supplement (or TLS) is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation. ...
Sextus Aurelius Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet born between 57 BC and 46 BC in or near Mevania, who died in around 12 BC. Like Virgil and Ovid, Propertius was also a member of the poetic circle of neoteric poets which collected around Mæcenas. ...
Ezra Pound in 1913. ...
Edgar Lee Masters (August 23, 1868 - March 5, 1950) was an American poet, biographer and dramatist. ...
Literary history of the Greek Anthology
The art of occasional poetry had been cultivated in Greece from an early period,--less, however, as the vehicle of personal feeling, than as the recognized commemoration of remarkable individuals or events, on sepulchral monuments and votive offerings: Such compositions were termed epigrams, i.e. inscriptions. The modern use of the word is a departure from the original sense, which simply indicated that the composition was intended to be engraved or inscribed. Such a composition must necessarily be brief, and the restraints attendant upon its publication concurred with the simplicity of Greek taste in prescribing conciseness of expression, pregnancy of meaning, purity of diction and singleness of thought, as the indispensable conditions of excellence in the epigrammatic style. The term was soon extended to any piece by which these conditions were fulfilled. The transition from the monumental to the purely literary character of the epigram was favoured by the exhaustion of more lofty forms of poetry, the general increase, from the general diffusion of culture, of accomplished writers and tasteful readers, but, above all, by the changed political circumstances of the times, which induced many who would otherwise have engaged in public affairs to addict themselves to literary pursuits. These causes came into full operation during the Alexandrian era, in which we find every description of epigrammatic composition perfectly developed. About 60 B.C., the sophist and poet, Meleager of Gadara, undertook to combine the choicest effusions of his predecessors into a single body of fugitive poetry. Collections of monumental inscriptions, or of poems on particular subjects, had previously been formed by Polemon Periegetes and others; but Meleager first gave the principle a comprehensive application. His selection, compiled from forty-six of his predecessors, and including numerous contributions of his own, was entitled The Garland (Στεφανος); and in an introductory poem each poet is compared to some flower, fancifully deemed appropriate to his genius. 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 epigrammatist, Philippus of Thessalonica, who first employed the term anthology. His collection, which included the compositions of thirteen writers subsequent to Meleager, was also arranged alphabetically, and contained an introductory poem. It was of inferior quality to Meleager's. Somewhat later, under Hadrian, another supplement was formed by the sophist Diogenianus of Heracleia (2nd century A.D.), and Strato of Sardis compiled his elegant but tainted Μουσα Παιδικη (Musa Puerilis) from his productions and those of earlier writers. No further collection from various sources is recorded until the time of Justinian, when epigrammatic writing, especially of an amatory character, experienced a great revival at the hands of Agathias of Myrina, the historian, Paulus Silentiarius, and their circle. Their ingenious but mannered productions were collected by Agathias into a new anthology, entitled The Circle (Κυκλος); 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, whose name alone is preserved in the single MS. of his compilation extant, but who probably lived during the temporary revival of letters under Constantine Porphyrogenitus, at the beginning of the 10th century. He appears to have merely made excerpts from the existing anthologies, with the addition of selections from Lucillius, Palladas, and other epigrammatists, whose compositions had been published separately. His arrangement, to which we shall have to recur, is founded on a principle of classification, and nearly corresponds to that adopted by Agathias. His principle of selection is unknown; it is only certain that while he omitted much that he should have retained, he has preserved much that would otherwise have perished. The extent of our obligations may be ascertained by a comparison between his anthology and that of the next editor, the monk Maximus Planudes (A.D. 1320), who has not merely grievously mutilated the anthology of Cephalas by omissions, but has 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 our only transcript of Cephalas.
The Planudean (in seven books) was the only recension of the anthology known at the revival of classical literature, and was first published at Florence, by Janus Lascaris, in 1494. It long continued to be the only accessible collection, for although the Palatine MS., the sole extant copy of the anthology of Cephalas, was discovered in the Palatine library at Heidelberg, and copied by Saumaise (Salmasius) in 1606, it was not published until 1776, when it was included in Brunck's Analecta Veterum Poetarum Graecorum. The MS. itself had frequently changed its quarters. In 1623, having been taken in the sack of Heidelberg in the Thirty Years' War, it was sent with the rest of the Palatine Library to Rome as a present from Maximilian I. of Bavaria to Gregory XV., who had it divided into two parts, the first of which was by far the larger; thence it was taken to Paris in 1797. In 1816 it went back to Heidelberg, but in an incomplete state, the second part remaining at Paris. It is now represented at Heidelberg by a photographic facsimile. Brunck's edition was superseded by the standard one of Friedrich Jacobs (1794-1814, 13 vols.), the text of which was reprinted in a more convenient form in 1813-1817, and occupies three pocket volumes in the Tauchnitz series of the classics. Claudius Salmasius is the Latin name of Claude Saumaise (April 15, 1588 - September 3, 1653), a French classical scholar. ...
The best edition for general purposes is perhaps that of Dubner in Didot's Bibliotheca (1864-1872), which contains the Palatine Anthology, the epigrams of the Planudean Anthology not comprised in the former, an appendix of pieces derived from other sources, copious notes selected from all quarters, a literal Latin prose translation by Jean François Boissonade, Bothe, and Lapaume and the metrical Latin versions of Hugo Grotius. A third volume, edited by E. Cougny, was published in 1890. The best edition of the Planudean Anthology is the splendid one by van Bosch and van Lennep (1795-1822). There is also a complete edition of the text by Stadtmuller in the Teubner series. Didot is the name of a family of French printers and publishers. ...
Jean François Boissonade de Fontarabie Jean François Boissonade de Fontarabie (August 12, 1774 - September 8, 1857), was a French classical scholar. ...
The covers of Bibliotheca Teubneriana Greek texts through the years: Philodemi De ira liber, ed. ...
Arrangement The Palatine MS., the archetype of the present 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 statues; 3. Inscriptions in the temple at Cyzicus; 4. The prefaces of Meleager, Philippus, and Agathias to their respective collections; 5. Amatory epigrams; 6. Votive inscriptions; 7. Epitaphs; 8. The epigrams of Gregory of Nazianzus; 9. Rhetorical and illustrative epigrams; 10. Ethical pieces; 11. Humorous and convivial; 12. Strata'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 Palatinus, and must be sought in an appendix of epigrams only occurring in the Planudean Anthology. The epigrams hitherto recovered from ancient monuments and similar sources form appendices in the second and third volumes of Dübner's edition.
Style and value One of the principal claims of the Anthology to attention is derived from its continuity, its existence as a living and growing body of poetry throughout all the vicissitudes of Greek civilization. More ambitious descriptions of composition speedily ran their course, and having attained their complete development became extinct or at best lingered only in feeble or conventional imitations. The humbler strains of the epigrammatic muse, on the other hand, remained ever fresh and animated, ever in intimate union with the spirit of the generation that gave them birth. To peruse the entire collection, accordingly, is as it were to assist at the disinterment of an ancient city, where generation has succeeded generation on the same site, and each stratum of soil enshrines the vestiges of a distinct epoch, but where all epochs, nevertheless, combine to constitute an organic whole, and the transition from one to the other is hardly perceptible. Four stages may be indicated:-- - The Hellenic proper, of which Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-469 B.C.), the author of most of the sepulchral inscriptions on those who fell in the Persian wars, is the characteristic representative. This is characterized by a simple dignity of phrase, which to a modern taste almost verges upon baldness, by a crystalline transparency of diction, and by an absolute fidelity to the original conception of the epigram. Nearly all the pieces of this era are actual bona fide inscriptions or addresses to real personages, whether living or deceased; narratives, literary exercises, and sports of fancy are exceedingly rare.
- The epigram received a great development in its second or Alexandrian era, when its range was so extended as to include anecdote, satire, and amorous longing; when epitaphs and votive inscriptions were composed on imaginary persons and things, and men of taste successfully attempted the same subjects in mutual emulation, or sat down to compose verses as displays of their ingenuity. The result was a great gain in richness of style and general interest, counterbalanced by a falling off in purity of diction and sincerity of treatment. The modification--a perfectly legitimate one, the resources of the old style being exhausted--had its real source in the transformation of political life, but may be said to commence with and to find its best representative in the playful and elegant Leonidas of Tarentum, a contemporary of Pyrrhus, and to close with Antipater of Sidon, about 140 B.C. (or later). It should be noticed, however, that Callimachus, one of the most distinguished of the Alexandrian poets, affects the sternest simplicity in his epigrams, and copies the austerity of Simonides with as much success as an imitator can expect.
- By a slight additional modification in the same direction, the Alexandrian passes into what, for the sake of preserving the parallelism with eras of Greek prose literature, we may call the Roman style, although the peculiarities of its principal representative are decidedly Oriental. Meleager of Gadara was a Syrian; his taste was less severe, and his temperament more fervent than those of his Greek predecessors; his pieces are usually erotic, and their glowing imagery sometimes reminds us of the Song of Solomon. The luxuriance of his fancy occasionally betrays him into far-fetched conceits, and the lavishness of his epithets is only redeemed by their exquisite felicity. Yet his effusions are manifestly the offspring of genuine feeling, and his epitaph on himself indicates a great advance on the exclusiveness of antique Greek patriotism, and is perhaps the first clear enunciation of the spirit of universal humanity characteristic of the later Stoic philosophy. His gaiety and licentiousness are imitated and exaggerated by his somewhat later contemporary, the Epicurean Philodemus, perhaps the liveliest of all the epigrammatists; his fancy reappears with diminished brilliancy in Philodemus's contemporary, Zonas, in Crinagoras, who wrote under Augustus, and in Marcus Argentarius, of uncertain date; his peculiar gorgeousness of colouring remains entirely his own. At a later period of the empire another genre, hitherto comparatively in abeyance, was developed, the satirical. Lucillius, who flourished under Nero, and Lucian, more renowned in other fields of literature, display a remarkable talent for shrewd, caustic epigram, frequently embodying moral reflexions of great cogency, often lashing vice and folly with signal effect, but not seldom indulging in mere trivialities, or deformed by scoffs at personal blemishes. This style of composition is not properly Greek, but Roman; it answers to the modern definition of epigram, and has hence attained a celebrity in excess of its deserts. It is remarkable, however, as an almost solitary example of direct Latin influence on Greek literature. The same style obtains with Palladas, an Alexandrian grammarian of the 4th century, the last of the strictly classical epigrammatists, and the first to be guilty of downright bad taste. His better pieces, however, are characterized by an austere ethical impressiveness, and his literary position is very interesting as that of an indignant but despairing opponent of Christianity.
- The fourth or Byzantine style of epigrammatic 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 peculiarly ornate and recherché diction of Agathias and his compeers is not a merit in itself, but, applied for the first time, it has the effect of revivifying an old form, and many of their new locutions are actual enrichments of the language. 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.
It would be hard to exaggerate the substantial value of the Anthology, whether as a storehouse of facts bearing on antique manners, customs and ideas, or as one among the influences which have contributed to mould the literature of the modern world. The multitudinous votive inscriptions, serious and sportive, connote the phases of Greek religious sentiment, from pious awe to irreverent familiarity and sarcastic scepticism; the moral tone of the nation at various periods is mirrored with corresponding fidelity; the sepulchral inscriptions admit us into the inmost sanctuary of family affection, and reveal a depth and tenderness of feeling beyond the province of the historian to depict, which we should not have surmised even from the dramatists; the general tendency of the collection is to display antiquity on its most human side, and to mitigate those contrasts with the modern world which more ambitious modes of composition force into relief. The constant reference to the details of private life renders the Anthology an inexhaustible treasury for the student of archaeology; art, industry and costume receive their fullest illustration from its pages. Its influence on European literatures will be appreciated in proportion to the inquirer's knowledge of each. The further his researches extend, the greater will be his astonishment at the extent to which the Anthology has been laid under contribution for thoughts which have become household words in all cultivated languages, and at the beneficial effect of the imitation of its brevity, simplicity, and absolute verbal accuracy upon the undisciplined luxuriance of modern genius.
Translations, imitations, &c. The best versions of the Anthology ever made are the Latin renderings of select epigrams by Hugo Grotius. They have not been printed separately, but will be found in Bosch and Lennep's edition of the Planudean Anthology, in the Didot edition, and in Dr Wellesley's Anthologia Polyglotta. Hugo Grotius Hugo Grotius (Huig de Groot, or Hugo de Groot; Delft, 10th April 1583 - Rostock, 28th August 1645) worked as a jurist in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands) and laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law. ...
The number of more or less professed imitations in modern languages is very large, that of actual translations less considerable. F. D. Dehèque's French prose translation, however (1863), is valuable. The German language admits of the preservation of the original metre--a circumstance advantageous to the German translators, Herder and Jacobs. A herder is a worker who lives a semi-nomadic life, caring for various domestic animals, especially in places where these animals wander unfenced pasture lands. ...
A.J. Jacobs is an American journalist and author. ...
Robert Bland, Charles Merivale, and their associates (1806-1813), are often diffuse. Francis Wrangham's (1769–1842) versions are more spirited; and John Sterling's translations of the inscriptions of Simonides deserve high praise. Professor Wilson (Blackwood's Magazine, 1833-1835) collected and commented upon the labours of these and other translators, but included indifferent attempts of William Hay. Charles Merivale (March 8, 1808 - December 27, 1893) was an English historian and churchman, for many years dean of Ely Cathedral. ...
John Sterling may refer to: John Sterling (author) (1806–1844), British John Sterling (sportscaster) (born 1948), American This human name article is a disambiguation page — a list of pages that might otherwise share the same title, which is a persons or persons name. ...
This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
Blackwoods Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. ...
William Hay - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...
In 1849 Dr Henry Wellesley, principal of New Inn Hall, Oxford, published his Anthologia Polyglotta, a collection of the translations and imitations in all languages, with the original text. In this appeared some admirable versions by Goldwin Smith and Merivale, which, with the other English renderings extant at the time, accompany the literal prose translation of the Public School Selections, executed by the Rev. George Burges for Bohn's Classical Library (1854). College name St Peters College Collegium Sancti Petri-le-Bailey Named after St Peter Established 1965 Sister College none Master The Rev Prof Bernard Silverman DSc FRS JCR President Catherine Park Undergraduates 396 Graduates 125 Homepage Boatclub St Peters College is a constituent college of the University of...
Goldwin Smith (August 13, 1823-June 7, 1910), was a British historian and journalist. ...
George Burges (1786−January 11, 1864), was an English classical scholar born in India. ...
In 1864 Major R. G. Macgregor published an almost complete translation of the Anthology, a work whose stupendous industry and fidelity almost redeem the general mediocrity of the execution. Idylls and Epigrams, by Richard Garnett (1869, reprinted 1892 in the Cameo series), includes about 140 translations or imitations, with some original compositions in tne same style. Richard Garnett (February 27, 1835 – April 13, 1906) was a scholar, librarian, biographer and poet. ...
Further translations (selections) are:
- J. W. Mackail, Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (with text, introduction, notes, and prose translation), 1890, revised 1906, a most charming volume
- Graham R. Tomson (Mrs Marriott Watson), Selections from the Greek Anthology (1889)
- W. H. D. Rouse, Echo of Greek Song (1899)
- L. C. Perry, From the Garden of Hellas (New York, 1891)
- W. R. Paton, Love Epigrams (1898).
- Daryl Hine, "Puerilities: Erotic Epigrams of The Greek Anthology" (Princeton UP, 2001)
An agreeable little volume on the Anthology, by Lord Neaves, is one of Collins's series of Ancient Classics for Modern Readers. The Earl of Cromer found time to translate and publish an elegant volume of selections (1903). John William Mackail (August 26, 1859 – December 13, 1945) was a Scottish man of letters and socialist, now best remembered as a Virgil scholar. ...
W.H.D.Rouse (1863-1950) was an exceptional teacher. ...
Lord Neaves as a judge. ...
The title of Earl of Cromer was created in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1901 for Evelyn Baring, 1st Viscount Cromer, the long-time British Consul-General in Egypt. ...
Two critical contributions to the subject are the Rev. James Davies's essay on Epigrams in the Quarterly Review (vol. cxvii.), especially valuable for its lucid illustration of the distinction between Greek and Latin epigram; and the brilliant disquisition in J. A. Symonds's Studies of the Greek Poets (1873; 3rd ed., 1893). John Addington Symonds was the name of a father and son, both English writers. ...
References - This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
Encyclopædia Britannica, the 11th edition The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is perhaps the most famous edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. ...
The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...
External links |
Feeds |
Contact