god of the lower world, and to the souls of the dead. Although no performances were allowed at the theatre, a sort of rehearsal took place, at which the players for the ensuing dramatic festival were selected.
The name Anthesteria, according to the account of it given above, is usually connected with ἄνθος (“flower,” or the “bloom” of the grape), but A. W. Verrall (Journal of Hellenic Studies, xx., 1900, p. 115) explains it as a feast of “revocation” (from (ἀναθέσσασθαι, to “pray back” or “up”), at which the ghosts of the dead were recalled to the land of the living (cp. the Roman mundus patet). J. E. Harrison (ibid. 100, 109, and Prolegomena), regarding the Anthesteria as primarily a festival of all souls, the object of which was the expulsion of ancestral ghosts by means of placation, explains πιθοιγία as the feast of the opening of the graves (πίθος meaning a large urn used for burial purposes), χόες as the day of libations, and χύτροι as the day of the grave-holes (not “pots,” which is χύτραι), in point of time really anterior to the πιθοιγία. E. Rohde and M. P. Nilsson, however, take the χύτροι to mean “water vessels,” and connect the ceremony with the Hydrophoria, a libation festival to propitiate the dead who had perished in the flood of Deucalion.
See F. Hiller von Gärtringen in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie (s.v.); J. Girard in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités (s.v. “Dionysia”); and F. A. Voigt in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie (s.v. “Dionysos”); J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903); M. P. Nilsson, Studia de Dionysiis Atticis (1900) and Griechische Feste (1906); G. F. Schömann, Griechische Alterthümer, ii. (ed. J. H. Lipsius, 1902), p. 516; A. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen (1898); E. Rohde, Psyche (4th ed., 1907), p. 237.
ANTHIM THE IBERIAN, a notable figure in the ecclesiastical history of Rumania. A Georgian by birth, he came to Rumania early in the second half of the 17th century, as a simple monk. He became bishop of Râmnicu in 1705, and in 1708 archbishop of Walachia. Taking a leading part in the political movements of the time, he came into conflict with the newly appointed Greek hospodars, and was exiled to Rumelia. But on his crossing the Danube in 1716 he was thrown into the water and drowned, as it is alleged, at the instigation of the prince of Walachia. He was a man of great talents and spoke and wrote many Oriental and European languages. Though a foreigner, he soon acquired a thorough knowledge of Rumanian, and was instrumental in helping to introduce that language into the church as its official language. He was a master printer and an artist of the first order. He cut the wood blocks for the books which he printed in Tirgovishtea, Râmnicu, Snagov and Bucharest. He was also the first to introduce Oriental founts of type into Rumania, and he printed there the first Arabic missal for the Christians of the East (Râmnicu, 1702). He also trained Georgians in the art of printing, and cut the type with which under his pupil Mihail Ishtvanovitch they printed the first Georgian Gospels (Tiflis, 1709). A man of great oratorical power, Anthim delivered a series of sermons (Didahii), and some of his pastoral letters are models of style and of language as well as of exact and beautiful printing. He also completed a whole corpus of lectionaries, missals, gospels, &c.
See M. Gaster, Chrestomathie roumaine (1881), and “Gesch. d. rumänischen Litteratur,” in Gröber, Grundriss d. rom. Philologie, vol. ii. (1899); and E. Picot, Notice sur Anthim d’Ivir (Paris, 1886). (M. G.)
ANTHOLOGY. The term “anthology,” literally denoting a garland or collection of flowers, is figuratively applied to any selection of literary beauties, and especially to that great body of fugitive poetry, comprehending about 4500 pieces, by upwards of 300 writers, which is commonly known as the Greek Anthology.
Literary History of the Greek Anthology.—The art of occasional poetry had been cultivated in Greece from an early period,—less, however, as the vehicle of personal feeling, than as the recognized commemoration of remarkable individuals or events, on sepulchral monuments and votive offerings. Such compositions were termed epigrams, i.e. inscriptions. The modern use of the word is a departure from the original sense, which simply indicated that the composition was intended to be engraved or inscribed. Such a composition must necessarily be brief, and the restraints attendant upon its publication concurred with the simplicity of Greek taste in prescribing conciseness of expression, pregnancy of meaning, purity of diction and singleness of thought, as the indispensable conditions of excellence in the epigrammatic style. The term was soon extended to any piece by which these conditions were fulfilled. The transition from the monumental to the purely literary character of the epigram was favoured by the exhaustion of more lofty forms of poetry, the general increase, from the general diffusion of culture, of accomplished writers and tasteful readers, but, above all, by the changed political circumstances of the times, which induced many who would otherwise have engaged in public affairs to addict themselves to literary pursuits. These causes came into full operation during the Alexandrian era, in which we find every description of epigrammatic composition perfectly developed. About 60 B.C., the sophist and poet, Meleager of Gadara, undertook to combine the choicest effusions of his predecessors into a single body of fugitive poetry. Collections of monumental inscriptions, or of poems on particular subjects, had previously been formed by Polemon Periegetes and others; but Meleager first gave the principle a comprehensive application. His selection, compiled from forty-six of his predecessors, and including numerous contributions of his own, was entitled The Garland (Στέφανος); and in an introductory poem each poet is compared to some flower, fancifully deemed appropriate to his genius. The arrangement of his collection was alphabetical, according to the initial letter of each epigram.
In the age of the emperor Tiberius (or Trajan, according to others) the work of Meleager was continued by another epigrammatist, Philippus of Thessalonica, who first employed the term anthology. His collection, which included the compositions of thirteen writers subsequent to Meleager, was also arranged alphabetically, and contained an introductory poem. It was of inferior quality to Meleager’s. Somewhat later, under Hadrian, another supplement was formed by the sophist Diogenianus of Heracleia (2nd century A.D.), and Strato of Sardis compiled his elegant but tainted Μοῦσα Παιδική (Musa Puerilis) from his productions and those of earlier writers. No further collection from various sources is recorded until the time of Justinian, when epigrammatic writing, especially of an amatory character, experienced a great revival at the hands of Agathias of Myrina, the historian, Paulus Silentiarius, and their circle. Their ingenious but mannered productions were collected by Agathias into a new anthology, entitled The Circle (Κύκλος); it was the first to be divided into books, and arranged with reference to the subjects of the pieces.
These and other collections made during the middle ages are now lost. The partial incorporation of them into a single body, classified according to the contents in 15 books, was the work of a certain Constantinus Cephalas, whose name alone is preserved in the single MS. of his compilation extant, but who probably lived during the temporary revival of letters under Constantine Porphyrogenitus, at the beginning of the 10th century. He appears to have merely made excerpts from the existing anthologies, with the addition of selections from Lucillius, Palladas, and other epigrammatists, whose compositions had been published separately. His arrangement, to which we shall have to recur, is founded on a principle of classification, and nearly corresponds to that adopted by Agathias. His principle of selection is unknown; it is only certain that while he omitted much that he should have retained, he has preserved much that would otherwise have perished. The extent of our obligations may be ascertained by a comparison between his anthology and that of the next editor, the monk Maximus Planudes (A.D. 1320), who has not merely grievously mutilated the anthology of Cephalas by omissions, but has disfigured it by interpolating verses of his own. We are, however, indebted to him for the preservation of the epigrams on works of art, which seem to have been accidentally omitted from our only transcript of Cephalas.
The Planudean (in seven books) was the only recension of the anthology known at the revival of classical literature, and was first published at Florence, by Janus Lascaris, in 1494. It long continued
