Anthology, from a Greek word meaning literally 'a collection of flowers,' is a title given to a work consisting of a series of choice thoughts, generally used solely of collections of poems. By far the most important is the Greek anthology, though the Latin anthology is also famous.
Greek Anthology.—The first Greek anthology deserving the name was compiled by Meleager of Gadara, in Syria, about 60 B.C. He called it a 'Garland' (Stephanos), and included in it poems by himself and forty-six earlier poets—Archilochus, Alceus, Anacreon, Simonides, Sappho, and others. This collection was added to by four successive editors, and in the 10th century Constantine Cephalas made a new collection, containing the best in the earlier ones, with some additions. Maximus Planudes, in the 14th century, by his tasteless selection from the work of Cephalas, rather spoiled than increased the already existing store; but his excerpt was the only anthology known in the West until the 17th century. It was printed at Florence by Lascaris in 1494 and frequently re-edited, and translated by Grotius. Meanwhile, Salmasius had discovered in the Heidelberg Library (1606) the only extant manuscript of the older and richer anthology of Cephalas, and copied it. The Heidelberg MS. was subsequently carried to Rome and Paris, returning to its old home in 1816. The anthology, as Salmasius copied it, was not published till it was included by Brunck in Analecta (1772-76); and this was superseded by the standard Anthologia Græca of F. Jacobs (13 vols. 1794-1803; improved in 1813-17). The edition in Didot's Bibliotheca (1864-72) is admirable. Good selections from the anthology are those of Weichert, Jacobs, and Meineke.
The Greek anthology contains specimens of 300 Greek poets at all periods of Greek civilisation—the old Hellenic, Alexandrian, and Byzantine, heathen and Christian—and is invaluable as a reflection of Greek thought, mainly in its most human side, illustrating, with a fullness not elsewhere found, domestic life and private feeling. Love songs, witty verses, and devout sentiment are found there side by side; the terse, pithy, dignified poem suitable for inscription (epigram in the old sense; see EPIGRAM) of the ancient time is followed by the florid, ornate writings of the later period. Nowhere is there to be found a richer variety of poetic life, greater delicacy of sentiment, a more joyous serenity, a greater abundance of wise, true, and humane thoughts, than sparkle in the pages of the Greek anthology. There are English translations of selections by Wrangham, John Sterling, Merivale, Macgregor, and Garnett. See the little work on the anthology by Lord Neaves; Symond's Studies of the Greek Poets (1873); A. J. Butler's Amaranth and Asphodel: Songs from the Greek Anthology (1881).
Latin Anthology.—The ancient Romans had no proper anthologies. In 1573, Scaliger published at Leyden, in imitation of the Greek anthology, a Latin anthology, under the title Catalecta Veterum Poëtarum, and Pitthous one at Paris in 1590. A larger Anthologia was issued at Amsterdam (1759 and 1773) by Peter Burmann the Younger, a better arranged edition of which was published by Meyer in 1835. The first critical Latin anthology was that of Riese (1869-70), containing 942 poems of very various merit—some really admirable verses, and much that is artistically worthless.
Asiatic literature is extremely rich in anthologies, which consist sometimes of extracts from the best poets, arranged according to the subject, and sometimes of 'beauties' of their best poets, with biographical notices, which are either placed in chronological order, or according to the countries in which the authors lived. The Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literatures are rich in anthologies; there are also Tartar, Indian, and Chinese collections of a similar kind.
The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language (1861), by
F. T. Palgrave, is a brief English anthology (new ed. 1896; 2d series, 1897); Trench's Household Book of English Poetry (1868) is another work of a similar kind. A larger selection is the English Poets, edited by T. H. Ward (4 vols. 1880).