THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY.* 'THE Greek Anthology contains in all between

five and six 'thousand epigrams. There are the two collections known as the Palatine and the Planudian Anthologies, from which we get, in round numbers, about four thousand. Some hundreds rare quoted by various authors, and a thousand and more have been found on various monuments, sepulchral and other. Mr. Mackail's selection numbers about five hundred. We may frankly say—and this, indeed, is about the only fault that we have to find with his work—that this number might have been diminished without material loss, and with a certain advan- tage. We should have excluded from the erotic poems a certain class which it is unnecessary to describe any further. They represent a fact which is only too prominent in the life of the Greek people, which we have to encounter in its history and philosophy, but may fairly avoid when we are selecting the beauties and graces of its imagination and sentiment.

One of the most obvious and remarkable characteristics of the Greek Anthology is the vast range of time over which it extends. From Mimnermus, an elder contemporary of Solon, to Paullus Silentiarus, one of the Secretaries of State to the Emperor Justinian, there is a period of nearly twelve cen- turies; and though there is little or nothing of value in the Anthology after Paullus and his contemporaries, yet epigrams continued to be written for four centuries more. The latest in date of those given by Mr. Mackail probably belongs to the tenth century of our era. It is the work of a Byzantine "Master of the Rolls," and, as Mr. Mackail puts it, "seems to be the very voice of ancient poetry bidding the world a lingering and reluctant farewell " :—

nay oixe, ernerrate flar)eve Teas &I xeiheal ripeoP,

'HXeo lap aims Taur irl OeihoriSots

which is Englished thus :-

" Dear Pan, abide here, drawing thy pipe over thy lips, for thou wilt find Echo on these sunny greens ; or, to put it into verse :— " Here, dearest Pan, with pipe on lip, abide ;

Still Echo haunts this sunny country-side."

It is noteworthy that daring all these centuries the language has not materially changed. An expert, indeed, can distin- guish, apart from dialectic peculiarities, between the Greek of Mimnermus and Erinna, of Simonides and of Plato, and the • (L) Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology. Edited, with a Revised Text, Introduction, Translation, and Notes, by J. W. Mackail. London : Longmans. 1890.—(2.) Fifty Poems of Meleager. VI, ith a Translation by Walter Headlam. London : Macan and Co. 1890.

Greek of the Byzantine epigrammatists ; but for the general reader it is substantially the same. It is curious to contrast this sameness with the wide difference that divides the language of Caedmon and the language of Lord Tennyson.

Mr. Mackail divides his selection into twelve sections, to which he gives the titles of " Love," " Prayers and Dedica- tions," " Epitaphs," " Literature and Art," "Religion," " Nature," " The Family," " Beauty," "Fate and Change," " The Human Comedy," " Death," and "Life." Of course, this is a cross division ; not a few of the epigrams might be transposed from one section to another without difficulty. But the division is convenient, and suffices for all practical purposes. He is sparing with his notes, especially where the criticism of the text is concerned, but not, we think, deficient; and, indeed, a faithful translation, such as he gives—for he contrives to combine fidelity and grace in a rare degree—is in itself a commentary. There is a biographical index, arranging the writers of the Anthology under five periods, and an intro- duction which contains some subtle and eloquently expressed criticism.

Here, for instance, is a fine passage, dealing with a subject of great literary interest :—

" The descriptions of Nature too are, as a rule, not only slightly sketched, but kept subordinate to a human relation. The brilliance and loveliness of spring is the background for the picture of the sailor again putting to sea, or the husbandman setting his plough at work in the furrow; the summer woods are a resting-place for the hot and thirsty traveller ; the golden leaves of autumn thinning in the frosty night, making haste to be gone before the storms of rough November, are a frame for the boy beneath them. The life of earth is rarely thought of as distinct from the life of man. It is so in a few late epigrams. The complaint of the cicala, torn away by shepherds from its harmless green life of song and dew among the leaves, and the poem bidding the black- bird leave the dangerous oak, where, with its breast against a_ spray, it pours out its clear music, are probably of Roman date ; another of uncertain period but of great beauty, an epitaph on an old bee-keeper who lived alone on the hills with the high woods and pastures for his only neighbours, contrasts with a strangely modern feeling the perpetuity of nature and the return of the works of spring with the brief life of man that ends once for all on a cold winter night."

Mr. Mackail's version of the epigram is as follows :- " Naiads and chill cattle-pastures, tell to the bees when they come on their springtide way, that old Leucippus perished on a winter's night, setting snares for scampering hares, and no longer is the tending of the hives dear to him ; but the pastoral dells mourn sore for him who dwelt with the mountain peak for neighbour."

But we may be permitted to doubt whether the contrast between the perpetuity of nature and the brevity of life can be called modern. It occurs with the greatest distinctness in Bion's Elegy on Moschns, in that famous passage which con- trasts the renewed life of the herbs of the garden with the " long, unending, unawakening sleep of death."

Here, too, is another fine passage, in which the identity of feeling between the art and the poetry of the Greeks is well illustrated

" The sepulchral reliefs show us many aspects of death ; in all of the beat period there is a common note, mingled of a grave tender- ness, simplicity, and reserve. The quiet figures there take leave of one another with the same grace that their life had shown. There is none of the horror of darkness, none of the ugliness of dying; with calm faces and undisordered raiment they rise from their seats and take the last farewell. But the sepulchral verses show us more clearly how deep the grief was that lay beneath the quiet lines of the marble and the smooth cadence of the couplets. They cover and fill the whole range of emotion : household grief, and pain for the dead baby or the drowned lover, and the bitter parting of wife and husband, and the chill of distance and the doubt of the unknown nether world; and the thoughts of the bright and brief space of life, and the merciless continuity of nature, and the resolution of body and soul into the elements from which they came ; and the uselessness of Death's impatience, and the bitter cry of a life gone like spilt water ; and again, comfort out of the grave, perpetual placidity, holy sleep,' and earth's gratitude to her children, and beyond all, dimly and lightly drawn, the flowery meadows of Persephone, the great simplicity and rest of the other world, and far away a shadowy and beautiful country to which later men were to give the name of Heaven."

But it is not easy to choose where there is so mach that is worthy of quotation. And when we come to the epigrams themselves, the choice is still more difficult. Here is the version of one of the very few genuine remains of Erinna, who, dying at the age of nineteen, was held by the critics of antiquity to be at least the equal of her friend Sappho:- " I am of Bancis the bride ; and passing by my oft-wept pillar thou mayest say this to Death that dwells under ground, Thou art envious, 0 Death ; ' and the coloured monument tells to him who sees it the most bitter fortune of Banco, how her father-in- law burned the girl on the funeral pyre with those torches by whose light the marriage train was to be led home ; and thou, 0 Hymenaens, didst change the tuneable bridal song into a voice of wailing dirges."

Readers of the younger Pliny will remember a parallel in his letter about the young Fundania, whose father had spent on the spices for her funeral pyre what he had intended to give for her trousseau. The section of the epitaphs is, indeed, the finest in the volumes, as it certainly includes some of the greatest names. Plato's famous couplet, though it is put in another section, might have been ranged among them. " Per- haps the most perfect epigram ever written in any language," says Mr. MackaiL We give the Greek and the English :-- 'Airrim Tplv µhr il.csigres drl Cools-u, 'Or Sl buyan, Aci,uarets*Ecrwspos "Morning Star that once didst shine among the living, now deceased thou shinest the Evening Star among the dead."

Of the more playful kind is the following

"No longer, poor partridge migrated from the rocks, does thy woven house hold thee in its thin withies, nor under the sparkle of fresh-faced Dawn dost thou ruffle up the edges of thy basking wings ; the cat bit off thy head, but the rest of thee I snatched away, and she did not fill her greedy jaw ; and now may the earth cover thee not lightly but heavily, lest she drag out thy remains."

Here is a curious anticipation of aprls moi is deluge

"Drink now and love, Damocrates, since not for ever shall we drink nor for ever hold fast our delight ; let us crown our heads with garlands and perfume ourselves, before others bring these offerings to our graves. Now rather let my bones drink wine inside me ; when they are dead, let Deucalion's deluge sweep them away."

It would be unfair to question the merit of faithfulness which Mr. Headlam claims, and justly claims, for his translations from Meleager; but both in spirit and finish they leave some- thing to be desired. Here is a specimen of his work, Meleager's epitaph on himself :— " Tread softly, stranger: here at rest among pure souls below

an old man, Meleager, sleeps the sleep that all men owe : The son of Eucrates ; that did together of his wit Muses and Love the sweet in tears with merry Graces knit : Whom Tyre divine to manhood reared, and Gadara's holy land ; Cos of the Merops nursed his age upon her lovely strand.

If thou art Syrian, then Salaam ! Naidios ! if Phenician ; prithee to me return the same, or Cheers! if a Grecian."

We are inclined to prefer Mr. Mackail's prose :- " Tread softly, 0 stranger; for here an old man sleeps among the holy dead, lulled in the slumber due to all, Meleager son of Encratos, who united Love of the sweet tears and the Muses with the joyous Graces; whom God-begotten Tyre brought to man- hood, and the sacred land of Gadara, but lovely Cos nursed in old age among the Meropes. But if thou art a Syrian, say Salem, and if a Phoenician, Naidios, and if a Greek, Hail; they are the same."

The fourth in the volume, On xornolos, is better, but not perfect:— "Now bloometh the white violet, now bloom the daffodils

that love the rain, the lilies bloom that ramble o'er the hills.

Now, love's delight, among the flowers the fairest flower that blows, Zenophile is in her bloom, Enchantment's own sweet rose. .

Ye meadows, why so vainly smile for blossoms in the grass, whenas your fragrant posies all my lady doth surpass P'