The Anthology of Planudes (also called Planudean Anthology, in Latin Anthologia Planudea or sometimes in Greek Ἀνθολογία διαφόρων ἐπιγραμμάτων ("Anthology of various epigrams"), from the first line of the manuscript), is an anthology of Greek epigrams and poems compiled by Maximus Planudes, a Byzantine grammarian and theologian, based on the Anthology of Cephalas . It comprises 2,400 epigrams.
The Anthology of Planudes starts with the text: «Ἀνθολογία διαφόρων ἐπιγραμμάτων, συντεθειμένων σοφοίς, ἐπί διαφόροις ὑποθέσεσιν ...» (Anthology of various epigrams, created by wise people, about different subjects ...) and consists of seven books.
It can be found in an autograph copy of Planudes in Biblioteca Marciana (codex Marcianus gr. 481) in Venice but also in two apographs, one in an incomplete edition (in London, British Library Add MS 16409) and the other in the final edition of the anthology (which is only in fragmentary form, in Paris, Paris B.N. gr. 2744), as well as in several printed editions. [1]
Several printed copies of the Planudean Anthology were made, as it was the only known anthology of Greek epigrams and poems until 1606, when the Palatine Anthology manuscript was found.
The anthology is today part of the corpus of texts known today as the Greek Anthology. The 397 [2] [3] [4] epigrams not found in the Palatine Anthology (also mentioned as 395 [5] and often as 388 [6] [7] [8] ) are usually included in the Greek Anthology as the Appendix Planudea. [2] [6]
Even though the Anthology of Planudes is based in the Anthology of Cephalas, comparison with the Palatine Anthology (also based on Cephalas's anthology) shows that not only many poems and epigrams were omitted (Palatine has 3700 epigrams, while the Planudean only 2400), but also Planudes made several mistakes or "corrections". At the beginning the transcription was done accurately, but after a certain point omissions become more and more as if the author lost his interest or was pressed to finalise the books. As a result, when the much more accurate Palatine Anthology was discovered, the interest of researchers was shifted from the Planudean to the Palatine. The only important element of the Planudean collection are the 388 epigrams not found in the Palatine, which are considered to have been part of the Anthology of Cephalas, but for an unknown reasons were not transcribed in the Palatine Anthology. [2]
The first printed edition of the Anthology of Planudes (editio princeps) was printed by Janus Lascaris in 1494 in Florence under the title «Anthologia Graeca». [9] It was also printed later on by Aldus Manutius (Venice 1503, 1521, 1551), Badius Ascensius (Paris 1531), P. and J.-M. Nicolini (Venice 1550), Jean Brodeau (Basel 1549), Henricus Stephanus (Paris 1566).
The edition of Bosch was printed between 1795 and 1822 in Utrecht in five volumes with Latin translation by Hugo Grotius entitled «Anthologia Graeca cum versione Latina Hugonis Grotii». Apart from the text of the Planudean Anthology, this edition also had other texts included after the first half of the third book.
Palladas was a Greek poet, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt.
Maximus Planudes was a Byzantine Greek monk, scholar, anthologist, translator, mathematician, grammarian and theologian at Constantinople. Through his translations from Latin into Greek and from Greek into Latin, he brought the Greek East and the Latin West into closer contact with one another. He is now best known as a compiler of the Greek Anthology.
Claude Saumaise, also known by the Latin name Claudius Salmasius, was a French classical scholar.
The Greek Anthology is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the Greek Anthology comes from two manuscripts, the Palatine Anthology of the 10th century and the Anthology of Planudes of the 14th century.
Anyte of Tegea was a Hellenistic poet from Tegea in Arcadia. Little is known of her life, but twenty-four epigrams attributed to her are preserved in the Greek Anthology, and one is quoted by Julius Pollux; nineteen of these are generally accepted as authentic. She introduced rural themes to the genre, which became a standard theme in Hellenistic epigrams. She is one of the nine outstanding ancient women poets listed by Antipater of Thessalonica in the Palatine Anthology. Her pastoral poetry may have influenced Theocritus, and her works were adapted by several later poets, including Ovid.
In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors.
Straton of Sardis was a Greek poet and anthologist from the Lydian city of Sardis.
Meleager of Gadara was a poet and collector of epigrams. He wrote some satirical prose, now lost, and some sensual poetry, of which 134 epigrams survive.
Mesomedes of Crete was a Greek citharode and lyric poet and composer of the early 2nd century AD in Roman Greece. Prior to the discovery of the Seikilos epitaph in the late 19th century, the hymns of Mesomedes were the only surviving written music from the ancient world. Three were published by Vincenzo Galilei in his Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna, during a period of intense investigation into music of the ancient Greeks. These hymns had been preserved through the Byzantine tradition, and were presented to Vincenzo by Girolamo Mei.
The Latin Anthology is a modern name given to a collection of Latin verse, from the age of Ennius to about 1000, formed by Pieter Burmann the Younger. Nothing corresponding to the Greek Anthology is known to have existed among the Romans, though professional epigrammatists like Martial published their volumes on their own account, collections of short sententiae were compiled from authors like Publilius Syrus, and small groups of verse on special subjects, like the Priapeia, also survive.
Janus Lascaris, also called John Rhyndacenus, was a noted Greek scholar in the Renaissance.
The Palatine Anthology, sometimes abbreviated AP, is the collection of Greek poems and epigrams discovered in 1606 in the Palatine Library in Heidelberg. It is based on the lost collection of Constantinus Cephalas of the 10th century, which in turn is based on older anthologies. It contains material from the 7th century BC until 600 AD and later on was the main part of the Greek Anthology which also included the Anthology of Planudes and more material.
Antiphanes of Macedon is the author of ten epigrams in the Greek Anthology; one of these is headed as Antiphanes of Megalopolis and may be by another poet.
Hieronymus de Bosch or Jeronimo de Bosch was a Latin poet and notable scholar from the Netherlands. He wrote several books, the most important of which was the "Anthologia Graeca", containing the Anthology of Planudes with Latin translation.
Syllogae minores is a term used in literature to describe small collections of Greek epigrams, which are part of the so-called Greek Anthology, the collection of Greek epigrams. The term "Syllogae" comes from the Greek word "Συλλογαί" (collections), while the term "minores" (minor) is used to distinguish them from the large and important collections of Palatine Anthology and the Anthology of Planudes. Some of these collections are important because of the epigrams which contain some not found in any of the other collections, while others are highly dependent on known sources, mainly of the Anthology of Planudes.
Immanuel Gottlieb Huschke was a German classical philologist.
The main Ancient Greek terms for riddle are αἴνιγμα and γρῖφος. The two terms are often used interchangeably, though some ancient commentators tried to distinguish between them.
The collection of the Marciana Library contains 4,639 manuscripts and 13,117 manuscript volumes. Its historical nucleus is the private collection of Cardinal Bessarion, which was donated to the Republic of Venice in 1468.
Besantinus was a Greek epigrammatist of the Roman period who flourished in Hadrian's era and was possibly from Rhodes.