MELEAGER and PHILIP AS EPIGRAM COLLECTORS Lorenzo
MELEAGER AND PHILIP AS EPIGRAM COLLECTORS Lorenzo Argentieri 1. The Epigram Crisis in the Second Century B.C. Meleager is our source of knowledge for the most important period of Greek epigram. As both poet and editor, he created an anthology called the Garland (%c' #) at the beginning of the rst century B.C., comprising many epigrams by older poets, to which he added his own. Meleager’s decision to form such a collection represents a major departure from earlier Hellenistic practice, which had been satis ed with merely gathering together and cataloguing the works of past authors.1 A glance at the poets named by Meleager in the opening poem of the Garland (AP 4.1 = 1 GP) reveals a rather uneven chronological distribution. Here they are ranked by date of birth:2 Up to 350 B.C. Archilochus, Sappho, Anacreon, Simonides, Bacchylides, Plato, Erinna ca. 330–320 Anyte, Nossis, Moero, Leonidas, Asclepiades, Simias, Perses (?) ca. 310–300 Posidippus, Hedylus, Alexander Aetolus, Nicias, Cal- limachus, Aratus, Antagoras ca. 270 Euphorion, Rhianus, Hegesippus (?) ca. 250 Nicaenetus, Damagetus, Mnasalces, Dioscorides, Theo- doridas, Phaedimus (?) ca. 230–220 Samius, Alcaeus ca. 180 Antipater, Phanias, Polystratos It is remarkable that after including many poets of the third century B.C., he has only three from the second. This difference may be due to Meleager’s personal taste; he preferred third-century authors (rightly, to 1 Argentieri (1998: 2–4). 2 Revised from Page (1975: xi) and the introductions to individual poets in Gow- Page (1965). I do not deal with the thorny problem of epigrams ascribed to ancient authors (“up to 350”), which however Meleager held for genuine; see the introductions in Gow-Page (1965) to Sappho and Erinna, and Page (1980) for all the others, along with Sider in this volume.
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