Page:The Greek Anthology, Vol. 1.djvu/10

Rh much tenderness and beauty in many of the poems, but the writers wrote in a language which they did not command, but by which they were commanded, as all who try to write ancient Greek are.

Cephalas included also in addition to the poems drawn from these main sources : (1) a certain number of epigrams derived from well-known authors and a few copied from stones; (2) the Musa Puerilis of Strato (Book XII), a collection on a special subject made at an uncertain date ; (3) a collection of Love poems largely by Rufinus (beginning of Book V); (1) the epigrams of the Alexandrian Palladas (fifth century A.D.). At the beginning of each book (from Book V onwards) I try to indicate what is certainly due to each source. In Book IV will be found the proems of the three chief sources that I mention above. Books I-III explain themselves. In the twelfth or thirteenth century, a scholar of astounding industry, Maximus Planudes, to whom learning owes a heavy debt, rearranged and revised the work of Cephalas and to him alone we owe