the inmost sanctuary of family affection, and reveal a depth and tenderness of feeling beyond the province of the historian to depict, which we should not have surmised even from the dramatists; the general tendency of the collection is to display antiquity on its most human side, and to mitigate those contrasts with the modern world which more ambitious modes of composition force into relief. The constant reference to the details of private life renders the Anthology an inexhaustible treasury for the student of archaeology; art, industry and costume receive their fullest illustration from its pages. Its influence on European literatures will be appreciated in proportion to the inquirer’s knowledge of each. The further his researches extend, the greater will be his astonishment at the extent to which the Anthology has been laid under contribution for thoughts which have become household words in all cultivated languages, and at the beneficial effect of the imitation of its brevity, simplicity, and absolute verbal accuracy upon the undisciplined luxuriance of modern genius.
Translations, Imitations, &c.—The best versions of the Anthology ever made are the Latin renderings of select epigrams by Hugo Grotius. They have not been printed separately, but will be found in Bosch and Lennep’s edition of the Planudean Anthology, in the Didot edition, and in Dr Wellesley’s Anthologia Polyglotta. The number of more or less professed imitations in modern languages is infinite, that of actual translations less considerable. French and Italian, indeed, are ill adapted to this purpose, from their incapacity of approximating to the form of the original, and their poets have usually contented themselves with paraphrases or imitations, often exceedingly felicitous. F. D. Dehèque’s French prose translation, however (1863), is most excellent and valuable. The German language alone admits of the preservation of the original metre—a circumstance advantageous to the German translators, Herder and Jacobs, who have not, however, compensated the loss inevitably consequent upon a change of idiom by any added beauties of their own. Though unfitted to reproduce the precise form, the English language, from its superior terseness, is better adapted to preserve the spirit of the original than the German; and the comparative ill success of many English translators must be chiefly attributed to the extremely low standard of fidelity and brevity observed by them. Bland, Merivale, and their associates (1806–1813), are often intolerably diffuse and feeble, from want, not of ability, but of taking pains. Archdeacon Wrangham’s too rare versions are much more spirited; and John Sterling’s translations of the inscriptions of Simonides deserve high praise. Professor Wilson (Blackwood’s Magazine, 1833–1835) collected and commented upon the labours of these and other translators, with his accustomed critical insight and exuberant geniality, but damaged his essay by burdening it with the indifferent attempts of William Hay. In 1849 Dr Wellesley, principal of New Inn Hall, Oxford, published his Anthologia Polyglotta, a most valuable collection of the best translations and imitations in all languages, with the original text. In this appeared some admirable versions by Goldwin Smith and Dean Merivale, which, with the other English renderings extant at the time, will be found accompanying the literal prose translation of the Public School Selections, executed by the Rev. George Burges for Bohn’s Classical Library (1854). This is a useful volume, but the editor’s notes are worthless. In 1864 Major R. G. Macgregor published an almost complete translation of the Anthology, a work whose stupendous industry and fidelity almost redeem the general mediocrity of the execution. Idylls and Epigrams, by R. Garnett (1869, reprinted 1892 in the Cameo series), includes about 140 translations or imitations, with some original compositions in the same style. Recent translations (selections) are: J. W. Mackail, Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (with text, introduction, notes, and prose translation), 1890, revised 1906, a most charming volume; Graham R. Tomson (Mrs Marriott Watson), Selections from the Greek Anthology (1889); W. H. D. Rouse, Echo of Greek Song (1899); L. C. Perry, From the Garden of Hellas (New York, 1891); W. R. Paton, Love Epigrams (1898). An agreeable little volume on the Anthology, by Lord Neaves, is one of Collins’s series of Ancient Classics for Modern Readers. The earl of Cromer, with all the cares of Egyptian administration upon him, found time to translate and publish an elegant volume of selections (1903). Two critical contributions to the subject should be noticed, the Rev. James Davies’s essay on Epigrams in the Quarterly Review (vol. cxvii.), especially valuable for its lucid illustration of the distinction between Greek and Latin epigram; and the brilliant disquisition in J. A. Symonds’s Studies of the Greek Poets (1873; 3rd ed., 1893).
Latin Anthology.—The Latin Anthology is the appellation bestowed upon a collection of fugitive Latin verse, from the age of Ennius to about A.D. 1000, formed by Peter 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, and detached sayings were excerpted from authors like Ennius and Publius Syrus, while the Priapeïa were probably but one among many collections on special subjects. The first general collection of scattered pieces made by a modern scholar was Scaliger’s Catalecta veterum Poetarum (1573), succeeded by the more ample one of Pithoeus, Epigrammata et Poemata e Codicibus et Lapidibus collecta (1590). Numerous additions, principally from inscriptions, continued to be made, and in 1759–1773 Burmann digested the whole into his Anthologia veterum Latinorum Epigrammatum et Poematum. This, occasionally reprinted, was the standard edition until 1869, when Alexander Riese commenced a new and more critical recension, from which many pieces improperly inserted by Burmann are rejected, and his classified arrangement is discarded for one according to the sources whence the poems have been derived. The first volume contains those found in MSS., in the order of the importance of these documents; those furnished by inscriptions following. The first volume (in two parts) appeared in 1869–1870, a second edition of the first part in 1894, and the second volume, Carmina Epigraphica (in two parts), in 1895–1897, edited by F. Bücheler. An Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa, in the same series, followed. Having been formed by scholars actuated by no aesthetic principles of selection, but solely intent on preserving everything they could find, the Latin anthology is much more heterogeneous than the Greek, and unspeakably inferior. The really beautiful poems of Petronius and Apuleius are more properly inserted in the collected editions of their writings, and more than half the remainder consists of the frigid conceits of pedantic professional exercises of grammarians of a very late period of the empire, relieved by an occasional gem, such as the apostrophe of the dying Hadrian to his spirit, or the epithalamium of Gallienus. The collection is also, for the most part, too recent in date, and too exclusively literary in character, to add much to our knowledge of classical antiquity. The epitaphs are interesting, but the genuineness of many of them is very questionable. (R. G.)
ANTHON, CHARLES (1797–1867), American classical scholar, was born in New York city on the 19th of November 1797. After graduating with honours at Columbia College in 1815, he began the study of law, and in 1819 was admitted to the bar, but never practised. In 1820 he was appointed assistant professor of Greek and Latin in his old college, full professor ten years later, and at the same time headmaster of the grammar school attached to the college, which post he held until 1864. He died at New York on the 29th of July 1867. He produced for use in colleges and schools a large number of classical works, which enjoyed great popularity, although his editions of classical authors were by no means in favour with schoolmasters, owing to the large amount of assistance, especially translations, contained in the notes.
ANTHONY, SAINT, the first Christian monk, was born in Egypt about 250. At the age of twenty he began to practise an ascetical life in the neighbourhood of his native place, and after fifteen years of this life he withdrew into solitude to a mountain by the Nile, called Pispir, now Der el Memun, opposite Arsinoë in the Fayum. Here he lived strictly enclosed in an old fort for twenty years. At last in the early years of the 4th century he emerged from his retreat and set himself to organize the monastic life of the crowds of monks who had followed him and taken up their abode in the caves around him. After a time, again in pursuit of more complete solitude, he withdrew to the mountain by the Red Sea, where now stands the monastery that bears his name (Der Mar Antonios). Here he died about the middle of the 4th century. His Life states that on two occasions he went to Alexandria, to strengthen the Christians in the Diocletian persecution and to preach against Arianism. Anthony is recognized as the first Christian monk and the first organizer and father of Christian monachism (see Monasticism). Certain letters and sermons are attributed to him, but their authenticity is more than doubtful. The monastic rule which bears his name was not written by him, but was compiled out of these writings
