GRAGG. — THE GREEK EPIGRAM BEFORE 300 B. C. 5 



remarkable for beauty of thought or execution. Consequently he has 

 admitted few early epigrams and his arrangement by subject precludes 

 any attempt at chronological order. Reitzenstein, in " Epigramm und 

 Skolion," discussed brilliantly the nature and history of the epigram,* 

 but his interest was chiefly for the work of the Alexandrian period and 

 he treated the early verses only as they could be made to support his 

 original theory about those of later date. A recent article by the same 

 scholar ® is by far the most satisfactory presentation of the subject known 

 to me, but the necessity of discussing the whole history of the epigram 

 in a few pages has prevented him from giving much space to the early 

 period or considering individual epigrams to any extent. Moreover, 

 since the publication of the collections of Kaibel, Allen, Preger, and 

 Hoffmann many new epigrams have come to light. These, together with 

 numerous suggestions of various scholars, are scattered in footnotes and 

 separate dissertations, where they easily escape the notice of the general 

 reader. 



For these reasons it seemed to me a profitable task to collect the 

 early ^ epigrams and, so far as I could, to trace the changes which 

 gradually took place in the nature of the epigram and its relation to 

 other branches of literature. 



Appended to this paper is a list of epigrams earlier than 300 b. c.® 

 To the material already at hand in the various thesauri I have added 

 such epigrams as I have my self gathered from the chief classical journals 

 published since the appearance of Hoffmann's book in 1893. I trust 

 that no epigram has been omitted for lack of care or diligence on my 

 part, but, even so, I cannot hope that the list will seem complete to 

 every reader. We possess, in the Palatine Anthology and elsewhere, 

 epigrams which give us absolutely no clue to their age, though certain 

 of them may seem to individual scholars to be early.^ If any of these 

 are missed, it is because I did not feel warranted in inserting in a list 

 from which historical conclusions were to be drawn, any epigrams which 

 are assigned to an early date merely by the " literary feeling " of this or 

 that scholar. On purely literary grounds it is often possible to say with 

 comparative certainty that an epigram is later than the fifth century ; 

 it is practically never possible to say that it is earlier than the third, 

 for the distinctive characteristics of the epigrams composed after 

 400 B. c. do not make their appearance earlier, while the austere and 



6 pp. 87 ff. 



' Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopaedie, s. v. Epij:;ranim. 

 ' I. e., those composed before 300 B. c. * pp. 45 flF. 



» E. g. Pr 64, 65, 206. Cf. PLG 2. 377 ff. 



