difficulties more conspicuous
than in the Anthology, yet it is the Anthology that has from time
immemorial notably attracted the attention of translators. It is indeed
true that the compositions of Agathias, Palladas, Paulus Silentiarius,
and the rest of the poetic tribe who "like the dun nightingale" were
"insatiate of song" ([Greek: oia tis xoutha akorestos boas ... aedon]),
must, comparatively speaking, rank low amongst the priceless legacies
which Greece bequeathed to a grateful posterity. A considerable number
of the writers whose works are comprised in the Anthology lived during
the Alexandrian age. The artificiality of French society before the
French Revolution developed a taste for shallow versifying. Somewhat
similar symptoms characterised the decadent society of Alexandria,
albeit there were occasions when a nobler note was struck, as in the
splendid hymn of Cleanthes, written in the early part of the second
century B.C. Generally speaking, however, Professor Mahaffy's criticism
of the literature of this period (_Greek Life and Thought_, p. 264)
holds good. "We feel in most of these poems that it is no real lover
languishing for his mistress, but a pedant posing before a critical
public. If ever poet was consoled by his muse, it was he; he was far
prouder if Alexandria applauded the grace of his epigram than if it
whispered the success of his suit." How have these manifest defects been
condoned? Why is it that, in spite of much that is artificial and
commonplace, the poetry of the Anthology still exercises, and will
continue to exercise, an undying charm alike over the student, the
moralist, and the man of the world? The reasons are not far to seek. In
the first place, no productions of the Greek genius conform more wholly
to the Aristotelian canon that poetry should be an imitation of the
universal. Few of the poems in the Anthology depict any ephemeral phase
or fashion of opinion, like the Euphuism of the sixteenth century. All
appeal to emotions which endure for all time, and which, it has been
aptly said, are the true raw material of poetry. The patriot can still
feel his blood stirred by the ringing verse of Simonides. The moralist
can ponder over the vanity of human wishes, which is portrayed in
endless varieties of form, and which, even when the writer most exults
in the worship of youth ([Greek: polyeratos hebe]) or extols the
philosophy of Epicurus, is always tinged with a shade of profound
melancholy