Epigrams, Greek; Greek poetry -- Translations into English
THEOGNIS of Megara, the celebrated elegiac and gnomic poet, fl. B.C.
548, and was still alive at the beginning of the Persian wars. The
fragments we possess are from an Anthology of his works, and amount to
about 1400 lines in all. He employed elegiac verse as a vehicle for
every kind of political and social poetry; some of the poems were sung
to the flute at banquets and are more akin to lyric poetry; others,
described as {gnomai di elegeias}, elegiac sentences, can hardly be
distinguished in essence from "hortatory" epigrams, and two of them
have accordingly been included as epigrams of Life in this selection.
ANACREON of Teos in Ionia, B.C. 563-478, migrated with his countrymen
to Abdera on the capture of Teos by the Persians, B.C. 540. He then
lived for some years at the court of Polycrates of Samos (who died
B.C. 522), and afterwards, like Simonides, at that of Hipparchus of
Athens, finally returning to Teos, where he died at the age of eighty-
five. Of his genuine poetry only a few inconsiderable fragments are
left; and his wide fame rests chiefly on the /pseudo-Anacreontea/, a
collection of songs chiefly of a convivial and amatory nature, written
at different times but all of a late date, which have come down to us
in the form of an appendix to the Palatine MS. of the Anthology, and
from being used as a school-book have obtained a circulation far
beyond their intrinsic merit. The /Garland/ of Meleager, l. 35, speaks
of "the unsown honey-suckle of Anacreon," including both lyrical
poetry ({melisma}) and epigrams ({elegoi}) as distinct from one
another. The Palatine Anthology contains twenty-one epigrams under his
name, a group of twelve together (vi. 134-145) transferred bodily, it
would seem, from some collection of his works, and the rest scattered;
and there is one other in Planudes. Most are plainly spurious, and
none certainly authentic; but one of the two given here (iii. 7) has
the note of style of this period, and is probably genuine. The other
(xi. 32) is obviously of Alexandrian date, and is probably by Leonidas
of Tarentum.
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