Chapter Three ANTHOLOGIES AND ANTHOLOGISTS Between c ...

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Part One: Texts and Contexts
As for the collections of epigrams found before and after the anthology of
Cephalas, it is not always clear who put them there: Cephalas himself, Constantine
the Rhodian or someone else. The collection of Christian epigrams in AP I
was certainly to be found in Cephalas, as will be shown in the next section. The
short sylloge at the end of the B manuscript, AP XV, 28–40, may perhaps have
been part of the original Cephalas, but I am inclined to think that it is a later
addition to the anthology of Cephalas (see pp. 107–108). Constantine the
Rhodian’s own contribution to the Greek Anthology is the small sylloge of
epigrams copied between John of Gaza’s Ekphrasis and the Technopaegnia (see
pp. 116–118).
For his anthology of epigrams (AP IV–VII and IX–XIV) Cephalas made
use of several sources, of which the five most important are: the Garland of
Meleager (1 st cent. BC), the Garland of Philip (1 st cent. AD), the Anthologion of
Diogenian (2 nd cent.), the Palladas Sylloge (6 th cent.) and the Cycle of Agathias
(c. 567) 17 . Cephalas’ anthology did not contain contemporary epigrams. The
only exceptions are Cephalas’ own preface to the book of erotic epigrams
(AP V, 1), and some epigrams by Leo the Philosopher and Theophanes the
Grammarian (see pp. 100–101 and 104–105). There can be no doubt that
Cephalas’ main objective in compiling his anthology was to rescue from oblivion
the epigrammatic legacy of the ancients. Cephalas’ scholarly pursuits are not
“antiquarian” or “encyclopedic”, as some maintain 18 , but bear proof of the
revived interest in classical literature in the ninth and tenth centuries. This
cultural revival manifests itself in the many manuscripts copied in this period
as well as in the direct quotations or indirect literary allusions with which
contemporary writings are replete. Since he was an intelligent, though sometimes
absent-minded editor, Cephalas understood that his task went beyond
the limits of mere copying, but involved above all a scholarly approach in
sorting out the material at his disposal. That is why he did not copy the
epigrams in exactly the same order as he found them in his manifold sources,
but attempted to rearrange them (not always successfully) according to genre.
His system of classification is essentially the same as that of Agathias, with the
addition of two new categories: protreptic and pederastic 19 . Cephalas’ working
17 For the Garlands of Meleager and Philip, see CAMERON 1993: 49–65. For the Anthologion
of Diogenian, see P. SAKOLOWSKI, De Anthologia Palatina quaestiones. Leipzig 1893 and
CAMERON 1993: 86–90. For the Palladas Sylloge, see A. FRANKE, De Pallada epigrammatographo.
Leipzig 1899 and LAUXTERMANN 1997. For the Cycle of Agathias, see MATTSON
1942 and A. & AV. CAMERON, JHSt 86 (1966) 6–25.
18 LEMERLE 1971: 268 calls the anthology of Cephalas “une encyclopédie épigrammatique”.
Lemerle’s “curiosa affermazione” was refuted by P. ODORICO, BZ 83 (1990) 5–6 and
CAMERON 1993: 334–335.
19 Cephalas divided Agathias’ fourth category, “on the devious paths of life, etc.”, into two
“books”: epideictic (AP IXa) and protreptic (AP X), probably because one of the