Anthology
（
ἀνθολογία,
anthologia).
“Garland of flowers.” A title now generally given to collections of short
poems. Both the Greek and the Latin anthologies are famous.
1.
The Greek Anthology.—The earliest anthology in Greek
was compiled by Meleager of Gadara, about B.C. 60, under the title
Στέφανος, or “Garland.” It contained poems by the compiler
himself and forty six other poets, including Archilochus, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Sappho, and
Simonides. Continual additions were made to this collection; and in the tenth century A.D.
Constantine Cephalas made a new compilation, as did Maximus Planudes in the fourteenth
century. The latter was lacking in literary taste; but his anthology was the only one known
to Western Europe until the seventeenth century, when Salmasius, in 1606, found in the
library at Heidelberg the much finer collection of Cephalas. The copy made by Salmasius was
not, however, published until 1776, when Brunck included it in his
Analecta.
The first critical edition was that of F. Jacobs
(13 vols. 1794-1803; revised
1813-17). A good recent edition is that in
Didot's Bibliotheca
(1872), while excellent selections have been made by Weichert and Meineke. See also
Thackeray's
Anthologia Graeca, with notes in English
(1877).
Translations of parts of the anthology have been made in English by Wrangham, John Sterling,
Merivale, and Garnett; but no translations can give any true idea of the terseness, elegance,
and sparkle of the original. See
Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets
(1873);
Butler, Amaranth and Asphodel (1881);
Mackail, Select Epigrams (1891); and
Finsler,
Gesch. der griech. Anthologie (1876).
2.
The Latin Anthology.—Unlike the Greek Anthology, the
collection known as the Latin Anthology was wholly made in modern times. The first was the
compilation of
Scaliger (q.v.), published at
Leyden in 1573, entitled
Catalecta Veterum Poetarum. A second collection was
published by Pitthoüs at Paris in 1590; and a still larger one by Peter
Burmann (q.v.) in 1759 and 1773. Of this a
rearrangement was made by Meyer in 1835. The first critical text of a Latin anthology is that
of Riese
(1869-70). It contains 942 poems of very unequal merit, but all of
interest. See the selections, with notes in English, by
Thackeray, Anthologia
Latina (1878); and the collection by Baehrens, in 5 vols.
(1883). See
Epigramma.
