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Lush Diodorus sets the lads on fire,
But now another has him in his net -
Timarion, the boy with wanton eyes . . .
Meleager, AP 12.109
Encompassing four thousand short poems and more, the ramshackle classic we call the Greek Anthology gathers up a millennium of snapshots from ancient daily life. Its influence echoes not merely in the classic tradition of the English epigram (Pope, Dryden) but in Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound, Virgina Woolf, T. S. Eliot, H.D., and the poets of the First World War. Its variety is almost infinite. Victorious armies, ruined cities, and Olympic champions share space with lovers' quarrels and laments for the untimely dead - but also with jokes and riddles, art appreciation, potted biographies of authors, and scenes from country life and the workplace.
This selection of more than 600 epigrams in verse is the first major translation from the Greek Anthology in nearly a century. Each of the Anthology's books of epigrams is represented here, in manuscript order, and with extensive notes on the history and myth that lie behind them.
List of contents
- Introduction
- The Christian epigrams
- Epigrams at Cyzicus
- Erotic epigrams by various poets
- The dedicatory epigrams
- Epigrams on tombs
- Epigrams of Saint Gregory the Theologian
- Rhetorical epigrams
- Advisory epigrams
- Sympotic and scoptic epigrams
- Strato's Boyish Muse
- Epigrams in assorted metres
- Arithmetical problems, riddles, and oracles
- Miscellaneous epigrams
- The Planudean Appendix
- Explantory Notes
About the author
Gideon Nisbet is Reader in Classics at the University of Birmingham. He researches and teaches in ancient literature, particularly epigram, and its reception in the modern world. His previous OUP publications include Greek Epigram in the Roman Empire (2003), Greek Epigram in Reception (2013), and, also in the Oxford World's Classics, Martial: Epigrams, with Parallel Latin Text (2015).
Summary
Lush Diodorus sets the lads on fire,
But now another has him in his net -
Timarion, the boy with wanton eyes . . .
Meleager, AP 12.109
Encompassing four thousand short poems and more, the ramshackle classic we call the Greek Anthology gathers up a millennium of snapshots from ancient daily life. Its influence echoes not merely in the classic tradition of the English epigram (Pope, Dryden) but in Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound, Virgina Woolf, T. S. Eliot, H.D., and the poets of the First World War. Its variety is almost infinite. Victorious armies, ruined cities, and Olympic champions share space with lovers' quarrels and laments for the untimely dead - but also with jokes and riddles, art appreciation, potted biographies of authors, and scenes from country life and the workplace.
This selection of more than 600 epigrams in verse is the first major translation from the Greek Anthology in nearly a century. Each of the Anthology's books of epigrams is represented here, in manuscript order, and with extensive notes on the history and myth that lie behind them.
Report
This new edition of Greek epigrams, translated by Gideon Nisbet ... must be counted as a service to society as well as a significant literary achievement. Robert S. Erickson, The New Criterion
