Epigrams, Greek; Greek poetry -- Translations into English
LUCILIUS, the author of one hundred and twenty-three epigrams in the
Palatine Anthology (twenty others are of doubtful authorship) was, as
we learn from himself, a grammarian at Rome and a pensioner of Nero.
He published two volumes of epigrams, somewhat like those of Martial,
in a satiric and hyperbolical style.[1]
NICARCHUS is the author of forty-two epigrams of the same kind as
those of Lucilius. Another given under his name (/Anth. Pal./ vii.
159) is of the early Alexandrian period, perhaps by Nicias of Miletus,
as the converse mistake is made in the Palatine MS. with regard to xi.
398. A large proportion of his epigrams are directed against doctors.
There is nothing to fix the precise part of the century in which he
lived.
To some part of this century also belong SECUNDUS of Tarentum and
MYRINUS, each the other of four epigrams in the Anthology. Nothing
further is known of either.
(3) STRATO of Sardis, the collector of the Anthology called {Mousa
Paidike Stratonos} and extant, apparently in an imperfect and
mutilated form, as the twelfth section or first appendix of the
Palatine Anthology may be placed with tolerable certainty in the reign
of Hadrian. Besides his ninety-four epigrams preserved in his own
Anthology, five others are attributed to him in the Palatine
Anthology, and one more in Planudes.
AMMIANUS is the author of twenty-nine epigrams in the Anthology, all
irrisory. One of them (/Anth. Pal./ xi. 226) is imitated from Martial,
ix. 30. Another sneers at the neo-Atticism which had become the
fashion in Greek prose writing. His date is fixed by an attack on
Antonius Polemo, a well-known sophist of the age of Hadrian.
THYMOCLES is only known from his single epigram in Strato's Anthology.
It is in the manner of Callimachus and may perhaps be of the
Alexandrian period.
To this or an earlier date belongs ARCHIAS of Mitylene, the author of
a number of miscellaneous epigrams, chiefly imitated from older
writers such as Antipater and Leonidas. Forty-one epigrams in all are
attributed on some authority to one Archias or another; most have the
name simply; some are headed "Archias the Grammarian," "Archias the
Younger," "Archias the Macedonian," "Archias of Byzantium." All are
sufficiently like each other in style to be by the same hand. Some
have been attributed to Cicero's client, Archias of Antioch, but they
seem to be of a later period.
To the age of Hadrian also belongs the epigram inscribed on the Memnon
statue at Thebes with the name of its author, ASCLEPIODOTUS, ix. 19 in
this selection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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