Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology Review

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(More customer reviews)The contents of this book is only a small portion of what is called the Greek Anthology which consists in about 4000 Greek epigrams (short poems) from the period approximately 600 BC - 600 AC. They are collected for the first time in a manuscript of the 13th century.This work is divided in sixteen books each with a different subject.You don't have to read all 4000 epigrams, you just chose a book with a subject you like. The most popular are book V about love, book VII about death and funeral, book XI about Bacchus and satires and book XIV with problems, riddles and oracles. You can learn a great deal about daily life in Antiquity just by reading these short poems (some of them no more than two lines). We read about prostitutes and courtisanes, sailors and fishermen and-for example-about three girls, shy and giggling, offering flowers to the statue of Aphrodite, goddess of Love. If you don't like the rigid books like 'Daily life in Ancient Rome', buy a book with poems of the Greek Anthology.

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Product Description:
The purpose of this book is to present a complete collection, subject
to certain definitions and exceptions which will be mentioned later,
of all the best extant Greek Epigrams. Although many epigrams not
given here have in different ways a special interest of their own,
none, it is hoped, have been excluded which are of the first
excellence in any style. But, while it would be easy to agree on
three-fourths of the matter to be included in such a scope, perhaps
hardly any two persons would be in exact accordance with regard to the
rest; with many pieces which lie on the border line of excellence, the
decision must be made on a balance of very slight considerations, and
becomes in the end one rather of personal taste than of any fixed
principle.

For the Greek Anthology proper, use has chiefly been made of the two
great works of Jacobs, which have not yet been superseded by any more
definitive edition: /Anthologia Graeca sive Poetarum Graecorum lusus
ex recensione Brunckii; indices et commentarium adiecit Friedericus
Iacobs/ (Leipzig, 1794-1814: 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 Palatino desiderata et annotationem
criticam adiecit Fridericus Jacobs/ (Leipzig, 1813-1817: two volumes
of text and two of critical notes). An appendix to the latter contains
Paulssen's fresh collation of the Palatine MS. The small Tauchnitz
text is a very careless and inaccurate reprint of this edition. The
most convenient edition of the Anthology for ordinary reference is
that of F. Dubner in Didot's /Bibliothèque Grecque/ (Paris, 1864), in
two volumes, with a revised text, a Latin translation, and additional
notes by various hands. The epigrams recovered from inscriptions have
been collected and edited by G. Kaibel in his /Epigrammata Graeca ex
labidibus conlecta/ (Berlin, 1878). As this book was going through the
press, a third volume of the Didot Anthology has appeared, edited by
M. Ed. Cougny, under the title of /Appendix nova epigrammatum veterum
ex libris at marmoribus ductorum/, containing what purports to be a
complete collection, now made for the first time, of all extant
epigrams not in the Anthology.

In the notes, I have not thought it necessary to acknowledge, except
here once for all, my continual obligations to that superb monument of
scholarship, the commentary of Jacobs; but where a note or a reading
is borrowed from a later critic, his name is mentioned. All important
deviations from the received text of the Anthology are noted, and
referred to their author in each case; but, as this is not a critical
edition, the received text, when retained, is as a rule printed
without comment where it differs from that of the MSS. or other
originals.

The references in the notes to Bergk's /Lyrici Graeci/ give the pages
of the fourth edition. Epigrams from the Anthology are quoted by the
sections of the Palatine collection (/Anth. Pal./) and the appendices
to it (sections xiii-xv). After these appendices follows in modern
editions a collection (/App. Plan./) of all the epigrams in the
Planudean Anthology which are not found in the Palatine MS.

I have to thank Mr. P. E. Matheson, Fellow of New College, for his
kindness in looking over the proofsheets of this book.