The ''Latin Anthology'' is a modern name given to a collection of Latin verse, from the age of

Ennius Quintus Ennius (; c. 239 – c. 169 BC) was a writer and poet who lived during the Roman Republic. He is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was born in the small town of Rudiae, located near modern Lecce, Apulia, (Ancient Calabria, ...

to about 1000, formed by

Pieter Burmann the Younger Pieter Burman (23 October 1713 – 24 June 1778), also known as Peter or Pieter Burmann ( la, Petrus Burmannus) and distinguished from his uncle as (' or '), was a Dutch philologist. Life Born at Amsterdam, he was brought up by his uncle ...

. Nothing corresponding to the

Greek Anthology The ''Greek Anthology'' ( la, Anthologia Graeca) 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 ''Pa ...

is known to have existed among the Romans, though professional

epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two mille ...

matists like

Martial Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial ; March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD) was a Roman poet from Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of ''Epigrams'', published in Rome between AD 86 and ...

published their volumes on their own account, collections of short

sententiae ''Sententiae'', the nominative plural of the Latin word ''sententia'', are brief moral sayings, such as proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, or apophthegms taken from ancient or popular or other sources, often quoted without context. ''Sententia' ...

were compiled from authors like

Publilius Syrus __NOTOC__ Publilius Syrus ( fl. 85–43 BC), was a Latin writer, best known for his sententiae. He was a Syrian from Antioch who was brought as a slave to Roman Italy. Syrus was brought to Rome on the same ship that brought a certain Manilius, a ...

, and small groups of verse on special subjects, like the

Priapeia The ''Priapeia'' (or ''Carmina Priapea'') is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD ...

, also survive. The first general collection of scattered pieces made by a modern scholar was

Scaliger The Della Scala family, whose members were known as Scaligeri () or Scaligers (; from the Latinized ''de Scalis''), was the ruling family of Verona and mainland Veneto (except for Venice) from 1262 to 1387, for a total of 125 years. History Wh ...

's ''Catalecta veterum Poetarum'' (1573), succeeded by the more ample one of

Pithoeus Pierre Pithou (1 November 1539 – 1 November 1596) was a French lawyer and scholar. He is also known as Petrus Pithoeus. Life He was born at Troyes. From childhood he loved literature, and his father Pierre encouraged this interest. Young ...

, ''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'', the editorship of which fell to philologist

Johann Christian Wernsdorf Johann Christian Wernsdorf I (6 November 1723 in Wittenberg – 25 August 1793 in Helmstedt) was a German writer, poet, and rhetorician. Life Born the son of Gottlieb Wernsdorf the Elder and his wife Magaretha Katharina (nee Nitsch), he lost his ...

after Burmann's death. This, occasionally reprinted, was the standard edition until 1869, when

Alexander Riese Alexander Riese (2 June 1840, Frankfurt – 8 October 1924, Frankfurt) was a German classical scholar. An ''R'', after his surname, indicates the canonical numeration for poems surviving in the Anthologia Latina, of which he edited into a more cri ...

commenced a new and more critical recension, from which many pieces improperly inserted by Burmann were rejected, and his classification was replaced by an arrangement that followed the sources from which the poems were derived, beginning with those found in manuscripts, followed by those from inscriptions. The first volume (in two parts) first appeared in 1869–1870, with a second edition of the first part in 1894 and a second edition of the second part in 1906. In 1982 the first part was replaced by an entirely new edition by

D. R. Shackleton Bailey David Roy Shackleton Bailey FBA (10 December 1917 – 28 November 2005) was a British scholar of Latin literature (particularly in the field of textual criticism) who spent his academic life teaching at the University of Cambridge, the Univers ...

. The second volume (in two parts) appeared in 1895–1897 under the separate title ''Carmina Epigraphica'' and was edited by

Franz Bücheler Franz Bücheler (3 June 18373 May 1908) was a German classical scholar, was born in Rheinberg, and educated at Bonn, where he was a student of Friedrich Ritschl (1806–1876). Biography In 1856 Bücheler graduated from the University of Bonn wit ...

. Having been formed by scholars motivated by no aesthetic principles of selection, but chiefly intent on preserving everything they could find, the Latin anthology is much more heterogeneous than the Greek.

References

External links

* ''Anthologia latina'' sive ''Poesis latinae supplementus'', recensuit Franciscus Buecheler et

vol. 1, parts 1 and 2vol. 2, parts 1, 2
an
3
Lipsiae in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1869-1926. *Frank F. Abbott,
Review of Anthologia Latina. Pars posterior: Carmina Epigrapphica conlegit Franciscus Buecheler. Lipsiae, 1895-97
in ''The American Journal of Philology'', vol. 19, n. 1 (1898), pp. 86–90. {{Authority control *