10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



to US in MSS. originally (i. e. in the fifth century) consisted of only two 

 verses. The joinings had escaped the notice of critics for centuries and 

 it is impossible to say how many more such pieces of patchwork there 

 may be in the Anthology and elsewhere. 



And yet to admit all this is not necessarily to believe with many 

 scholars 37 that no confidence is to be placed in those MSS. which 

 assign epigrams to definite authors. For, though the tests of author- 

 ship which we can apply are most uncertain, still, unless we can bring 

 forward at least highly probable arguments to the contrary, we are 

 bound to give the benefit of the doubt to the only evidence we have. 

 However weak may be the authority of the Palatine Anthology, it is 

 not for us to make it actually testify against itself Therefore Reitzen- 

 stein seems to go too far when he says, 38 " Es ist meines Erachtens 

 unmethodisch bei dieser Art Pseudo-tradition auch nur den Beweis der 

 Unechtheit zu verlangen." 



There are two reasons why scholars incline to reject the testimony of 

 the Anthology. In the first place they are reluctant to believe that 

 the early poets wrote epigrams at all — a reluctance which has no evi- 

 dence to support it. When this art was so generally cultivated were 

 the famous poets the ones to neglect it ? Because very few epigrams 

 of these poets have come down to us, are we to reject even those that 

 we have 1 This is to let individual conjecture weigh against probability 

 and, indeed, against some actual evidence. In the second place many 

 seem convinced that the scribes of the Anthology were possessed by a 

 desire to assign every poem to too early a date. This is certainly, 

 however, not the case, for the discovery of a number of epigrams 

 inscribed on stones 39 has proved that, even if they are not the work of 

 the particular poets whose names they bear in the Anthology, these 

 names point at least to the approximate dates. In some cases epigrams 

 are actually assigned to too late a period. For example '217 — found 

 inscribed in letters of the fourth century — bears in the Anthology the 

 name of Gaetulicus, a poet, indeed, little known to us, but, if we may 

 judge from the other epigrams attributed to him, much later than the 

 fourth century. Again 128, a poem certainly inscribed in the fifth 



37 Wilamowitz (fioett. Nachr. 1897, p. 320) : Fiir uns ist .lie Cnwi'qwm. nnvor- 

 nKU.Uich, (lass wir die Autoritiit selbst der alcxaiidrinisehen SaniniUinj; da audi sel.r 

 niedrif; schiitzon, wo die Gedichte solbst keinen unmittclbaren Aiistoss geben. 



KaTbel (RM 28, p. 441) : Cavendnni utiiiue igitur est lie citius uiupiain huic testi 

 (AP) credaiiius ; meiidax est ac fallax lit iioti iiingis alter. 



A. A. .Tiiiighalin, De Simonidis Cei Epigraniiiiatis Quaestioiies (Berlin, 1869), 

 p. 30 : Paeiie nulla in his rebus tides est Antliologiae. 



38 Pauly-Wissowa, p. 80. "' K- g- "5 and 125. 



