AESCHYLUS 525–456 BCE. The earliest Greek playwright whose work survives, Aeschylus wrote more than eighty plays, of which seven remain. The transition in Athens from tyranny to democracy occurred during his youth. He fought in two major battles, Marathon and Salamis. Two epitaphs attributed to Aeschylus survive. His only son wrote plays as well.
AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS 536–582 CE. A Byzantine lawyer and scholar, Agathias studied in Alexandria and Constantinople. He wrote a history of the Emperor Justinian, compiled an anthology of contemporary poets, and produced many poems of his own. The Greek Anthology contains about 100 of his epigrams.
ANACREON One of the renowned early Greek lyric poets, Anacreon was born about 570 BCE in Ionia (present-day western Turkey). He served at court on the island of Samos and later in Athens, where he had many patrons. His songs were popular at symposia (drinking parties). His elegies and other poems were collected in five books. Only a few poems survive. Of the eighteen epigrams ascribed to him in the Anthology, many if not all are spurious.
ANTIPATER OF SIDON A Syrian in Rome in the late second century BCE. Cicero knew his work. He was famous for verse improvisations composed at the drop of a hat during parties. The Greek Anthology preserves at least 68 of his epigrams. Others may be his or written by another Antipater.
ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA A poet writing between 20 BCE and 20 CE, this Antipater has ninety or more poems in the Anthology and is otherwise unknown. In fact, scholars have had a hard time distinguishing the poems of the two Antipaters, except by textual inference. His connection with Thessalonica is an educated guess. He may have taught rhetoric in Rome. He may have traveled in Asia.
ANTIPHILUS OF BYZANTIUM From Asia Minor, he flourished around 50 CE, possibly at the court of the Roman Emperor Nero. His work is prized for innovative phrasing.
ANYTE A third-century BCE Arcadian from Tegea, Anyte, like Leonidas and Nossis, was a major voice among the first generation of Hellenistic poets. Only her epigrams survive. She is famous for introducing rural themes into the genre. Later Greek poets admired her mastery of melody.
APOLLONIDES Probably from Asia Minor, references in some of his thirty-one epigrams place him on the millennial cusp between 6 BCE and 15 CE.
ARISTON Dates unknown. His three epigrams were collected by Meleager in the first century BCE.
CALLIMACHUS 300–240 BCE. Probably from Cyrene in Libya, Callimachus lived in Alexandria and is usually associated with the great library there, although his name is not on the list of its librarians. Perhaps the most influential poet of his time, he displayed an unusual economy of words. Surviving, in addition to sixty epigrams, are six hymns and fragments of some lyrics, satirical and occasional poems, elegies, and miniature epics (epyllia). Catullus translated his Lock of Bereniké. The Latin epigrammatist Martial extolled Callimachus and, like another poet, Sextus Prop-ertius, was indebted to him. An advocate of compression, Callimachus declared the traditional epic obsolete. Though often embroiled in controversy, he appears to have been a sociable man who enjoyed some influence at the Greek court of the Ptolemies. His wife was Syracusan. He probably knew the pastoral poet Theocritus. Although culturally cosmopolitan, he may never have traveled beyond Egypt.
CARPHYLLIDES Nothing is certain about him, nor whether he lived before 90 BCE or as late as the second century CE.
CHAEREMON Nothing is known about the author except that he lived between 300 and 100 BCE.
CLEOBOULOS A sixth-century BCE ruler of Lindos, a city on the island of Rhodes. Whether or not he was the true author of this poem remains in question.
CRINAGORAS OF MYTILENE 70 BCE–10 CE. An ambassador twice to Julius Caesar and to Augustus Caesar in Spain, Crinagoras, a Greek from the island of Lesbos, left fifty-one epigrams. He moved in Roman high society and wrote with a distinctive style of his life and times.
DAMAGETUS A dozen of his epigrams are preserved in the Greek Anthology. Some of them indicate that Damagetus lived in the late third century BCE. Like Anyte, he seems to have been from the Peloponnese.
DAMASKIOS Damaskios was head of the Neoplatonic academy in Athens when the Emperor Justinian shut it down in 529 CE as part of an attempt to expunge paganism from the Christianized Roman Empire. Damaskios went into exile in Persia but was pardoned later and returned to Athens. His highly regarded philosophical works are lost.
DIOGENES LAERTIUS A third-century CE author, he is best known for his biographical volume on the Greek philosophers. He wrote dozens of epitaphs on literary figures long dead. Others are in a comic or ironic vein.
DIONYSIUS OF ANDROS Nothing is known about this poet.
DIOSCORIDES A late-third-century BCE poet, he left more than forty epigrams. He most likely lived in Alexandria, Egypt.
DIOTIMOS Two poets go by this name in the Anthology. Nine of the eleven poems by one or the other were written before the first century BCE. Nothing certain can be said of either man.
ETRUSCUS OF MESSENE Early first century CE. In the Anthology, he is represented by one poem.
HEGESIPPUS The themes and tone of his eight epigrams in the Anthology suggest that he wrote in the middle of the third century BCE. Otherwise, nothing is known about him.
HERACLEITUS The quality of his one preserved epigram warranted Callimachus’s praise for this third-century BCE poet (see page 86).
ISIDORUS OF AEGAE The high quality and elegant style of the five preserved epigrams by this unknown poet argue for placing him in the Classical period.
JULIANOS, PREFECT OF EGYPT Seventy poems are ascribed to this fifth-century CE governor.
LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA This first-century CE poet and astrologer specialized in trick verses. His patrons included the emperors Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian. Thirty of his forty poems in the Anthology are in couplets the letters of which, when assigned a numerical value, add up to the same sum. He also wrote several “echo” poems, another ingenious genre of questionable value.
LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM A third-century BCE poet associated with the city of Tarentum, Leonidas wrote more than 100 epigrams that have survived. They are mostly epitaphs and dedications. The Latin poets Virgil and Propertius regarded him highly and borrowed from him. His concern with working-class people is distinctive. He expanded the scope of the epigram in his day, as did his female contemporaries, Anyte and Nossis.
LUCILIUS A first-century CE grammarian patronized by Nero, he was a contemporary of Lucan and Petronius. Lucilius introduced humorous hyperbole into the epigram and influenced the great satiric Latin poet, Martial.
MELEAGER This first-century BCE poet and anthologist compiled a long-lived collection of epigrams containing work from the early seventh century to his own time. He was a masterful and prolific epigrammatist who influenced Catullus and the later Augustan poets, as well as the seventeenth-century English poet Robert Herrick.
MNASALCAS A third-century BCE poet who followed Anyte chronologically, and thematically too, especially in his many epitaphs on animals.
NICARCHUS A satiric poet of the first century CE in the style of Lucilius.
NICOMACHUS Neither the poet nor the event this epitaph memorializes can be dated.
Nossis A third-century BCE poet from Locri on the southeastern tip of Italy, Nossis wrote in Doric Greek and was a near contemporary of Anyte. She may have written lyric poetry too, but, as with Anyte, only her epigrams survive. Her poems on love especially leave a strong personal impression.
PALLADAS OF ALEXANDRIA A late-fourth-century CE author, Palladas wrote more than 150 epigrams. His mood of pessimistic melancholy catches well the frame of mind of the latter-day Hellenist.
PHALAECUS A poet of the late fourth century BCE.
PHILETAS OF SAMOS Possibly the accomplished Philetas of Kos, a fourth-century BCE poet and tutor to both the ruler Ptolemy II and the great pastoral poet Theocritus. Ovid and Propertius considered him the equal of Callimachus as an elegist. Little of his work survives.
PHILLIP OF THESSALONICA A first-century CE poet and anthologist who published an anthology containing his and many others’ epigrams, all composed after Meleager’s collection.
PLATO Tradition holds that the philosopher and great prose stylist wrote verse as a young man. Of the epigrams ascribed to him, the quality is uniformly high.
POSIDIPPUS 310 BC–240 BC. A Macedonian adherent of Orphism, he lived at court on Samos and then for many years in Alexandria, at the court of Ptolemy I and II. A contemporary of Callimachus, he was a professional composer of epigrams and a prominent literary figure in his time. Twenty-six of his epigrams are in the Anthology. In 2001, 110 new epigrams were recovered from the wrappings of an Egyptian mummy. Twenty of them were epitaphs.
RHIANUS A third-century BCE Cretan poet and freedman, he wrote five epics and edited Homer. Ten epigrams survive in the Anthology.
SAPPHO The quintessential Greek lyric poet. Sappho’s four surviving complete poems and many fragments are among the earliest examples in Western literature of an independent poetic voice. If, as most scholars hold, the epitaph on page 27 was written centuries later in the Hellenistic period, it is nonetheless Sapphic in expression.
SERAPION OF ALEXANDRIA There is only one poem ascribed to him in the Anthology. He wrote after 100 BCE and before 40 CE.
SIMONIDES Among the greatest of the Greek lyric poets, Simonides of Keos was born about 556 BCE and worked at courts in Athens and Thessaly. In his last years, he joined Pindar and Aeschylus at the court of Hiero in Syracuse. In stark simplicity and formal power his verse is unrivaled.
THEAETETUS Probably third century BCE. Three epigrams are ascribed to his name. Callimachus praises him elsewhere in the Anthology.
THEODORIDAS Late third century BCE. Seventeen epigrams are ascribed to him in the Anthology. He was probably from Sicily.
TRYPHON Nothing is known about this poet. His single collected epitaph appears very late, in a fifteenth-century CE collection. The story it tells probably concerns the seventh-century BCE poet Terpander.
TYMNES The author of seven extant epigrams, he is otherwise unknown. The name is Carian (a region in modern southwestern Turkey), not Greek. He must have written during or before the first century BCE.
ZONAS OF SARDIS An accomplished second- or first-century BCE poet, his sympathy with peoples to the east, with whom the Greeks warred, caused him political difficulties.