the splendid one by van
Bosch and van Lennep (1795-1822). There is also a complete edition of
the text by Stadlmuller in the Teubner series.

_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
Dubner'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:--1. 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,