Excerpt from Little Poems From the Greek

The first problem which faces a selector from the Anthology is that of arrangement. Should the epigrams be grouped under authors or subjects? The latter course is chosen by the editors of the original Anthology, and is followed, on lines of his own, by Mackail. It is recommended especially by the presence in the Anthology of a large number of anonymous poems which are wholly undatable, so that a complete arrangement in historical sequence however desirable in itself, is impossible; and the anonymous poems are of such high interest and importance that they claim a prominent place. But a grouping under subjects precludes the widerliterary view, and makes it difficult to grasp the personal value of the work of each poet; after all, the named poets are more numerous and more interesting than the anonymous; and it is desirable, if only as an alternative, that the work should, as far as possible, be presented as a whole. Moreover, any grouping under subjects must be to a large extent arbitrary. The Anthology itself has a most important section, the epideictic poems. How are these to be represented? There is no exact equivalent in English for the adjective; it seems to me that we must, if we wish to translate it, come perilously near to Sundries. Mr Mackail abolishes the section; but he again has to be arbitrary. He gives, for instance, four poems on a stock theme, sailing time in spring, all closely following a rigid scheme, and ending alike with a call to the sailor to pay his vow to Priapus before setting out. Of these two are classed under Religion (m. V. X, two under Nature (vi. 26, In my own case the problem is simplified by the fact that I am publishing only a selection of a selec tion; and there is good occasion, therefore, forgrouping these few poems under the authors' names, and arranging them as far as possible in historical sequence. The reader willbe able to form some idea, at least so far as I may have been successful, of the range and sentiment of each of the authors whom I have here chosen. 1 have followed Mackail's distri bution into periods and the compass of the volume allows of the inclusion only of about half the period covered by the Anthology - that is, roughly, from 600 b.c. To a.d. 550, not far short of twelve centuries. This little volume covers the first six, and does not touch the anonymous poems which may fall into them. The six later centuries and the anonyma offer material not inferior in grace and interest to what is here given; if readers care to have it, they can easily call for the production of a sequel. Some versions of the later poems have indeed been already printed for private circulation none of those are included here. The aim which I have set before myself is, of course, to present the spirit of the original in a read able English dress. The originals are poems, and I have tried to reproduce them as poems. But one is met at the first step by an obvious difficulty. The originals are all in one metre, the elegiac couplet. Should they be reproduced in one metre? For many reasons, I think not. English has never produced a metre which holds in literature such a dominant position as the elegiac couplet in Creek. The nearest approach is the heroic couplet of Pope and the eighteenth century, with its variation, the metre of Gray's Elegy. But to the invariable use of this there are many objections, not the least being that the eighteenth century atmosphere is not one that one wishes to introduce into the Greek Anthology; and one has to be carefully on guard against the mock-heroic.

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