O PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



Hj3a fioi, (f)iXt 6vfie • tu^' tiv rivts hXAoi eaovrai 



or 



Ai yhp arep vovcrcop re Koi apyaXicov fj.f\f8a>voiiV 

 f^rjKom-afTT] poljia Ki;^ot davarov.^^ 



All these we should call epigrams, if only we could be sure that they 

 are complete in themselves. 



By far the greater number of the extant early epigrams were inscribed 

 so that it becomes necessary to examine all early metrical inscriptions, 

 whether elegiac or not — all elegiacs, whether inscribed or not — that 

 we may learn as accurately as possible what causes w^ent to the making 

 of the later epigram. 



It is easy to distinguish the inscribed epigrams (if I may be allowed 

 the apparent pleonasm) of the fifth century and earlier, since the forms 

 of the letters testify to their age. It is harder to be sure of those 

 belonging to the fourth century,^© but usually the style or the content 

 comes to help out any doubtful epigraphical evidence.^^ When, how- 

 ever, we come to the epigrams which are preserved only in MSS. the 

 case is quite different. In the first place the works of the Greek lyric 

 poets are extant in so fi'agmentary a condition that very often we are 

 unable to say whether a given distich is a complete poem — i. e. an epi- 

 gram — or a shred torn from a longer elegy. The difficulty will be 

 obvious if we compare the following verses. 

 Soph. 0. C. 1224-8. 



fiT] cf)vvai fjLiv anavra vi- 

 Ko. Xoyov • TO 8 end 4"^*'V 



^rjflU K('l6fl>, 66tVT7fp tjKfl 



iToXi) 8evTfpui> (OS Td)(i(TTa 



Theog. 425-428 



irduTdu n^ (f)vvai iirixBovioimv apurrov 

 pTj8 eai8fli> aCyas o^eoy rjfXiov • 



28 Theog. 877, 878. 29 .Mi„HUTnuis, ti. 



^<* In the period before 300 R. c. no evidence as to tlie date is furnished by the 

 arrangcnu'nt of verses in inscriptions. As early as the sixth century each verse 

 may begin a new line and throughout the period we find epigrams where the verses 

 are not so separated. The latter method is more common in tlie sixth century, the 

 former in the fifth and fourth. There is no examjjle of an indented i^ntameter, un- 

 less it be 224, v. 2, which in CIA, H, 3. 2339 and in Kumanudes, I use. Sepulch. 

 Att. 858, is represented as indented one letter. I have not seen the stone. 



" From the collcetions of Kaibel and Allen I have taken no epigrams which those 

 editors do not definitely assign to a date earlier tlian 300 u. c. 



