Style
The poems in the anthology represent different periods. Four stages may be indicated:
- The Hellenic proper, of which Simonides of Ceos (c. 556 – 469 BC), the author of most of the sepulchral inscriptions on those who fell in the Persian wars, is representative. Nearly all the pieces of this era are actual inscriptions or addresses to real personages, whether living or deceased.
- The epigram received a great development in its second or Alexandrian era, when its range was extended to include anecdote, satire, and amorous longing; when epitaphs and votive inscriptions were composed on imaginary persons and things. The modification has a representative in Leonidas of Tarentum, a contemporary of Pyrrhus, and closes with Antipater of Sidon, about 140 BC (or later). Callimachus, one of the Alexandrian poets, affects stern simplicity in his epigrams.
- Meleager of Gadara was a Syrian; his pieces are usually erotic, with far-fetched conceits. His gaiety and licentiousness are imitated and exaggerated by his somewhat later contemporary, the Epicurean Philodemus, and his fancy reappears in Philodemus's contemporary, Zonas, in Crinagoras, who wrote under Augustus, and in Marcus Argentarius, of uncertain date. At a later period of the empire another genre, was developed, the satirical. Lucillius, who flourished under Nero, and Lucian, display a talent for shrewd, caustic epigram. The same style obtains with Palladas, an Alexandrian grammarian of the 4th century, the last of the strictly classical epigrammatists. His literary position is that of an indignant but despairing opponent of Christianity.
- The fourth or Byzantine style of epigrammatic composition was cultivated at the court of Justinian. The diction of Agathias and his compeers is ornate.
Read more about this topic: Greek Anthology
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