Select epigrams from the Greek anthology online

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SELECT EPIGRAMS FROM
THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY



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t



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SELECT EPIGRAMS

FROM THE

GREEK ANTHOLOGY

EDITED WITH REVISED TEXT TRANSLATION
INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY



J. W. MACKAIL

M.A., LL.D., SOMETIME FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE
PROFESSOR OF POETRT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD



NEW EDITION REVISED THROUGHOUT



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

1906




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W6&



Meleager in AfUh. Pal, iv. i.

Dim now and saiPdy
Like the soiPd tissue of white violets
Lefty freshly gathered^ on their native bank.

Arnold, Sohrab and Rustum,



f\ *^ W^



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PREFACE

Th£ volume published under this title in 1890 has been
for some years out of print In reprinting it, the oppor-
tunity has been taken to revise the text, translation and
notes carefully throughout, to rewrite considerable portions
of the introduction, and also to make some modifications
in the contents of the selection.

The purpose of this book, as stated in the preface to the
original edition, was to present, in such a form as would
appeal to the lover of literature and not be ungrateful to
the scholar, a collection of all the best extant Greek epi-
grams* Among the five hundred epigrams included in it —
less than one in ten of the whole number extant — will be
found, according to the editor's best judgment, all which
are of the first excellence in any style. The definitions
and exceptions subject to which this purpose has been
carried out are explained in the introductory essay.

It would be easy to agree on three-fourths of the
matter to be included in such a scope. With regard to
the remainder, perhaps hardly any two persons would be
in exact accordance. Many epigrams have their special
merit or interest, and also their special weakness or points
of inferiority. With those which lie on the border-line —
and of these there are certainly scores and may be
hundreds — the decision has to be made on a balance of
very slight considerations, and becomes in the last resort
one of personal taste rather than of any strict or defin-
able principle.

The selection originally made has been received by

vu



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viii GREEK ANTHOLOGY

competent judges with a favour which I desire gratefully
to acknowledge; and I have not been able to improve
upon it to any very considerable extent. It may be con-
venient here to indicate the exact differences in content
between this and the earlier edition. Ten epigrams
formerly included have been omitted (I. i6, 20, 57; II. 14,
ij; IV. 28; V. 16; X. 13, 34, 44). Twenty have been
added ; namely, those now numbered I. i6» 19, 44, 57 ;
II. 16, 24, 27; III. 6, 26, 40, 59; IV. 13, 34, 46; V. 16;
VII. 6; VIII. 14; XI. 26, so; XII. ig. No author has
disappeared from the collection ; five new authors are
added to it — Damascius, Isidorus, Phaennus, Phanias, and
Thucydides. The net result is to give a sightly greater
preponderance to Greek as against Byzantine work ; but it
is so slight as to be hardly noticeable.

As regards the Greek Anthology it still remains true that
the work of Friedrich Jacobs remains unsuperseded after a
century. His seventeen volumes, which appeared between
1794 and 18 17, represented the high- water mark of the
scholarship of their time. Until the great revival of classical
studies in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and the
new life breathed into them by the creation of scientific
archaeology and the application of the new historical method,
little more remained to be done. But with the modern
armament of scholarship it should be possible, and if
possible it is certainly desirable, to bring the splendid
work of a hundred years ago up to date. Much light has
still to be thrown, not only on the contents and history of
the Anthology, but on the whole of Greek life, art, and
thought as illustrated by it with a fulness and intimacy
which are in some respects unique. A solid beginning has
been made towards this work by the critical edition of
H. Stadtmiiller now in course of appearance. The two
volumes of this edition published in 1894 and 1899 only






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PREFACE ix

extend as far as the end of the seventh book of the
Palatine Anthology. His work is so accurate and
thorough that scholars must await the remaining volumes
with an eagerness which it is difficult to keep from passing
into impatience. When this new text is completed, *and
even before' in the phrase of Glaucon in the Republic,
it may be hoped that some scholar or association of scholars
in this country will base upon it a complete edition worthy
of modem scholarship on its literary and historical, no less
than on its textual side. No more important work than this
remains to be done in the field of Greek letters; and it
is hardly to the credit of English scholarship that it still
awaits accomplishment

The two editions of Jacobs have through time become
rare, though not at all inaccessible ; and they are absolutely
indispensable for any serious study of the Greek epigram
throughout the sixteen centuries of its history. They
are, Anthologia Graeca sive Poetarum Graeeorum lusus ex
recensione Brunckii; indices et comntentarium adiecit Frie-
dericus Jacobs, Leipzig, 1794- 1 814: four volumes of text and
nine of indices, prolegomena, commentary, and appendices ;
and Anthologia Graeca ad fidem codicis olim Palatini nunc
Parisini ex apographo Gothano edita ; curavit epigrammata
in Codice Palatine desiderata et annotationem criticam adiecit
Fridericus Jacobs, Leipzig, 18 13- 18 17: two volumes of text
and two of critical notes. For ordinary purposes the only
good text of the Anthology is that in Didot's Bibliothique
Grecque, with a Latin translation and a brief commentary
by various hands ; the first two volumes of which, edited
by F. Diibner, appeared in 1864, and the third, edited by
E. Cougny, in 1890. This third volume contains a com-
plete collection up to the date of its compilation of all
extant Greek epigrams not in the Anthology. In such a
collection there is of course no finality; fresh material



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X GREEK ANTHOLOGY

continues, though slowly, to accumulate so long as fresh
monuments are brought to light by research. At any
moment a substantial addition might be made to the
contents of our Anthology by the re-discovery of the lost
MS. mentioned below on page 24 of the Introduction.

It only remains to add a few words in explanation of the
commentary in this volume. It is founded on Jacobs
throughout, and what is derived in it from him is here
acknowledged once for all. Readings or notes taken from
subsequent critics are given with the name of their author.
But the received text is printed without comment, except
where it is doubtful or obscure, both in the epigrams taken
from the Anthology proper, and in those selected from
other sources. Among these, special mention should be
made of G. Kaibel's very valuable work, Epigrammata
Graeca ex lapidibus conlecta, 1878.

Epigrams from the Anthology are quoted by the sections
of the Palatine Anthology {Anth, Pal.) and the appendix
of epigrams in the Planudean Anthology which are not in
the Palatine MS. {App. Plan.\ as numbered in the latter of
Jacobs' two editions and in the Paris edition named
above. The numbering in Stadtmiiller's edition, which will
doubtless become the vulgate when completed, varies from
this throughout the fifth section, the Amatorta, owing to
the fact that he prints the three prefatory lines heading
that section without a number, so that the remaining
contents become Nos. 1-308 instead of 2-309 : his V. 309
being the epigram numbered VI. i* in the earlier editions.

The references in the notes to Bergk's Lyrici Graeci are
to the pages of the fourth edition.

6 Pembroke Gardens,
Kensington, i September 1906.



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CONTENTS



INTRODUCTION,
SELECT EPIGRAMS—

The Garland of Meleager,
I. Love, ...
"^ IL Prayers and Dedications,

III. Epitaphs,

IV. Literature and Art,
V. Religion,

VI. Nature, .
VII. The Family,
VI 1 1. Beauty, .
IX. Fate and Change,
X. The Human Comedy,
XL Death,
XII. Life,
BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX OF
NOTES,
INDICES, .



EPIGRAMMATISTS,



PAGB

I



93

96

129

149

174
194
202
215
225
231

245
263
285
305
339
423



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INTRODUCTION



I



The Greek word ' epigram ' in its original meaning is pre-^
cisely equivalent to the Latin word * inscription ' ; and it
probably came into use in this sense at a very early period
of Greek history, anterior even to the invention of prose.
Inscriptions at that time, if they went beyond a mere name
or set of names, or perhaps the bare statement of a simple
fact, were necessarily in verse, then the single vehicle of
oi^anised expression. Even after prose was in use, an
obvious propriety remained in the metrical form as being
at once more striking and more easily retained in the
memory ; while in the case of epitaphs and dedications —
for the earlier epigram falls almost entirely under these two
heads — religious feeling and a sense of what was due to
ancient custom aided the continuance of the old tradition.
Herodotus in the course of his History quotes epigrams of
both kinds ; and with him the word hrirfpafifia is just on
the point of acquiring its literary sense, though this is not
yet fixed definitely. In his account of the three ancient
tripods dedicated in the temple of Apollo at Thebes,^ he says
of one of them, o fikv S^ 679 r&v Tpiirottav erriypa^fia ^^i, and
then quotes the single . hexameter line engraved upon it.
Of the other two he says simply, * they say in hexameter,'
Xeye* ev i^afierp^ rovof. Again, where he describes the
funeral monuments at Thermopylae,' he uses the words
ypdfifjM and iirvypa^fia almost in the sense of sepulcral
epigrams ; i'lriyiypa^n-rai rypafifiara TUyovra roBe^ and a
little further on, i7nKoafii^a'avT€<: iTruypdfjbfMKrt Kai aniXyai,
' epitaphs and monuments.' Among these epitaphs is the
celebrated couplet of Simonides * which has found a place in
all subsequent Anthologies.

> Hdt. V. 59. * Hdt. vii. 228. ' III. 4 in this selection.

7*^ A



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2 GREEK ANTHOLOGY

In the Anthol<^y itself the word does not however in
fact occur till a late period. The proem of Meleager to his
collection uses the words aoiSij^ vfivo^^ fUXitrfAa, eXeyo^, all
vaguely, but has no term which corresponds in any degree
to our epigram. That of Philippus has one word which
describes the epigram by a single quality; he calls his
volume an oX«7o<rr«%ta or collection of poems not exceeding
a few lines in length. In an epitaph by Diodorus, a poet
of the Augustan age, occurs the phrase ypdfjLfia Xeyei,^ in
imitation of the phrase of Herodotus just quoted. This is,
no doubt, an intentional archaism ; but the word iiriypafifia
itself does not occur in the collection until the Roman
period. Two epigrams on the epigram,' one Roman, the
other Roman or Byzantine, are preserved, both dealing with
the question of the proper length. The former, by Parmenio,
merely says that an epigram of many lines is bad — 4^/jlI
TToXva-Tix^fjv iiri^pdfjLfjMTO^ ov xark Movaa^ elvai. The
other is more definite, but unfortunately ambiguous in
expression. It runs thus :

IlayicaXoi' eor' hriyftafifia rh 8(<rrtxov* ^v ^ vaptkOji^

The meaning of the first part is plain ; an epigram may be
complete within the limits of a single couplet. But do * the
three' mean three lines or three couplets? 'Exceeding
three ' would, in the one case, mean an epigram of four lines,
in the other, of eight. As there cannot properly be an epigram
of three lines, it would seem rather to mean the latter.
Even so the statement is an exaggeration ; some of the
best epigrams extend to eight lines. But it is true that the
epigram may * have its nature and stop,' in the phrase of
Aristotle,' within a single couplet ; and we shall find that
generally in those of eight lines, as without exception in those
of more than eight, there is either some repetition of idea
not necessary to the full expression of the thought, or some
redundance of epithet or detail too florid for the purest
taste, or, as in most of the Byzantine epigrams, a natural
verbosity which affects the style throughout and weakens
the force and directness of the epigram.

» ^«M. /Vi/. vi, ^. « An/k, Pal, ix. 342, 369. » Poet 1449 a. 14,



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INTRODUCTION 3

The notorious difficulty of giving any satisfactory defini-
tion of poetry is almost equalled by the difficulty of defining
with precision any one of its kinds ; and the epigram in
Greek, while it always remained conditioned by being in its
essence and origin an inscription al poem, took in the later
periods so wide a range of subject and treatment that it can
perhaps only be limited by certain abstract conventions of
length and metre. Sometimes it becomes in all but metrical
form a lyric ; sometimes it hardly rises beyond the versified
statement of a fact or an idea ; sometimes it is barely distin-
guishable from a snatch of pastoral. The shorter pieces of
the elegiac poets might very often well be classed as epi-
grams but for the uncertainty, due to the form in which
their text has come down to us, whether they are not in all
cases, as they undoubtedly are in some, portions of longer
poems. Many couplets and quatrains of Theognis fall
under this head ; and an excellent instance on a larger
scale is the fragment of fourteen lines by Simonides of
Amorgos,^ which is the exact type on which many of the later
* epigrams of life ' are moulded. In such cases respice auctoris
animum is a safe rule ; what was not written as an epigram
is not an epigram. Yet it has seemed worth while to illus-
trate this rule by its exceptions ; and there will be found in
this collection fragments of Mimnermus and Theognis *
which in everything but the actual circumstance of their
origin satisfy any requirement which can be made. In the
Palatine Anthology itself, indeed, there are a few instances ^
where this very thing is done. As a rule, however, these
short passages belong to the class of fif&fiai or moral
sentences, which, even when expressed in elegiac verse, is
sufficiently distinct from the true epigram. One instance
will suffice. In the Anthology there occurs this couplet :*

Jlav TO ir€pt.TThv oLKaipov €X€t Xoyos €<rTi n-aAatos,
&s KOI rov fA€\iros to itAcov €o-ti xokrj.

This is a sentence merely; an abstract moral idea, with

* Simon, fr. 85 Bergk. ^ xii. 6, 17, 37, in this selection,

' /iftM. PaL ix. 50, 118, X. 113. * Ap/>, Plan. 16,



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V



4 GREEK ANTHOLOGY

an illustration attached to it. Compare with it another
couplet ^ in the Anthology :

Aiutv irdvra <f>€p€C 8oXi\os XPovos oI8€v dfui/Stiv
ovvofia Kal iiop€f>riv koi ^wtv 'qSi rvxqv.

Here too there is a moral idea ; but in the expression,
abstract as it is, there is just that high note, that imagina-
tive touch, which gives it at once the gravity of an inscrip-
tion and the quality of a poem.

Again, many- so-called epigrams are little more than
stories told shortly in elegiac verse, much like the stories
in Ovid's Fasti. Here the inscriptional quality, perhaps in
many instances due to the verses having been actually written
for paintings or sculptures, is the surest test. It is this quality
that just makes an epigram of the sea-story told by Antipater
of Thessalonica, and of the legend of Eunomus the harp-
player ^ ; while other stories, such as those told of Pittacus,
of Euctemon, of Serapis and the murderer,* both tend to
exceed the reasonable limit of length, and have in no
degree either the lapidary precision or the imaginative
tension which would be necessary to make them more than
tales in verse. Once more, the fragments of idyllic poetry
which by chance have come down to us in the Anthology,*
beautiful as they are, are in no sense epigrams, any more
than the lyrics ascribed to Anacreon which form an appen-
dix to the Palatine collection, or the quotations from the
dramatists, Euripides, Menander, or Diphilus,^ which have
also at one time or another become incorporated with it.

In brief then, the epigram in its first intention may be
described as a very short poem summing up as though in a
memorial inscription what it is desired to make permanently
memorable in a single action or situation. It must have
the compression and conciseness of a real inscription, and
in proportion to the smallness of its bulk must be highly
finished, evenly balanced, simple, and lucid. In literature
it holds something of the same place as is held in art by an

1 Antk. Pal. ix. 51. * Anih, Pal. ix. 269, vi. 54.

» ArUh. Pal. vii. 89, ix. 367, 378. * Anih. Pal. ix. 136, 362, 363, 440.

« Anth. Pal. x. 107, xi, 438, 439.



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INTRODUCTION 5

engraved gem. But if the definition of the epigram is
only fixed thus, it is difficult to exclude almost any very
short poem that conforms externally to this standard ;
while on the other hand the chance of language has re-
stricted the word in its modern use to a sense which it
never bore in Greek at all, defined in the line of Boileau, un
bon mot de deux rimes cmi. This sense was made current
more especially by the epigrams of Martial, which as a rule
lead up to a pointed end, sometimes a witticism, sometimes
a verbal fancy, and are quite apart from the higher imagina-
tive qualities. No good epigram sacrifices its finer poetical
substance to the desire of making a point ; and none of the
best depend on having a point at all. From looking too
exclusively at the Latin epigrammatists, who all belonged to
a debased period in literature, some persons have been led to
speak of the Latin as distinct from the Greek sense of the
word 'epigram.' But in the Greek Anthology the epigrams
of contemporary writers have the same quality. The fault
was that of the age, not of the language.



II

While the epigram is thus somewhat incapable of strict
formal definition, for all practical purposes it may be con-
fined in Greek poetry to pieces written in a single metre, the
elegiac couplet. This was the form of verse appropriated to
inscriptions from the earliest recorded period.^ Tradition-
ally ascribed to the invention of Archilochus or Callinus,
the elegiac couplet, like the epic hexameter itself, first
meets us full grown.* The date of Archilochus of Paros
may be fixed pretty nearly at 700 B.C. That of Callinus of
Ephesus is perhaps earlier. It may be assumed with

* The first inscriptions of all were probably in hexameter : cf. Ildt. v. 59.

* Horace, A. P. 11. 75-8, leaves the origin of elegiac verse in obscurity.
When he says it was first used for laments, he probably follows the Alexandrian
derivation of the word ^eyot from t X/yeti'. The voti senientia compos to which
he says it became extended is interpreted by the commentators as meaning
amatory poetry. If thb was Horace's meaning he chose a most singular way
of expressing it. Any one would naturally suppose that he meant the poems of
thanksgiving accompanying dedicated offerings.



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6 GREEK ANTHOLOGY

probability that elegy was an invention of the same early
civilisation among the Greek colonies of the eastern coast
of the Aegean which produced the Iliad and the Odyssey.
From the first the elegiac metre was instinctively recognised
as the one best suited for inscriptional poems. Originally
indeed it had a much wider area, as it afterwards had again
with the Alexandrian poets; it seems to have been the
common metre for every kind of poetry which was neither
purely lyrical on the one hand, nor on the other included in
the definite scope of the heroic hexameter. The name
1X6709, 'wailing,' is probably as late as Simonides, when
from the frequency of its use for funeral inscriptions the
metre had acquired a mournful connotation, and became the
tristis elegeta of the Latin poets. But the war-chants of
Callinus and Tyrtaeus, and the political poems of the latter,
are at least fifty years earlier in date than the elegies of
Mimnermus, the first of which we have certain knowledge :
and in Theognis, a hundred years later than Mimnermus,
elegiac verse becomes a vehicle for the utmost diversity of
subject, and a vehicle so facile and flexible that it never
seems unsuitable or inadequate. For at least eighteen
hundred years it remained a living metre, through all that
time never undergoing any serious modification.^ Almost
up to the end of the Greek Empire of the East it continued
to be written, in imitation it is true of the old poets, but
still with the freedom of a language in common and unin-
terrupted use. As in the heroic hexameter the Asiatic
colonies of Greece invented the most fluent, stately and
harmonious metre for continuous narrative poetry which has
yet been invented by man, so in the elegiac couplet they
solved the problem, hardly a less difiicult one, of a metre
which would refuse nothing, which could rise to the
occasion and sink with it, and be equally suited to the
epitaph of a hero or the verses accompanying a birthday