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 Brunck's edition was superseded by the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.
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
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