Excerpt from Select Epigrams From the Greek Anthology About four thousand of them have been preserved in two collections made at Constantinople in the tenth and the fourteenth century, and the remainder have been brought together from literary and inscriptional sources by more scholars. The earliest of the date from 700 B.C., and they extend from that time almost continuously down to 1000 A.D. Throughout all that period they present little or no change in language or versification. A form of poetry which remained alive for seventeen centuries is unique in literary history, and bears striking testimony to the extraordinary vitality of the Greek genius. That vitality is not yet exhausted; it is still an influence over modern life, art, and thought. This selection of Greek minor poetry draws for us a picture of Greece in little; it is an epitome, slightly sketched with a facile hand, of the book of Greek life. A translation, notwithstanding its limitations and its necessary inadequacy, may give to English readers much of the substance, and something even of the tone and flavour, of the original. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.