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Rh the preservation of the epigrams have printed as an appendix (Book XVI), derived, no doubt, chiefly from a now lost book of Cephalas' Anthology containing epigrams on works of art. It may be a matter of dispute among scholars, but I do not believe myself that he had any text before him which was better than, or independent of, the tradition of the Palatine Manuscript. I therefore always follow, as strictly as possible, this tradition.

In Smith's Biographical Dictionary, under Planudes, a good account is given of the history of the Anthology, and readers may consult this. A still better and more recent account is Mr. Mackail's in the Introduction to his Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology.

A word should, perhaps, be said as to the arrangement of the epigrams in the three principal sources. Agathias in his proem gives us his own classification of the Epigrams: (1) Dedicatory, (2) On Works of Art, (3) Sepulchral, (4) Declamatory (?), (5) Satirical, (6) Amatory, (7) Convivial; i.e. the same classification as that of Cephalas, but not in the same order. The Scholiast of the Palatine MS. tells us that Meleager's Wreath was not arranged under subjects at all but alphabetically (i.e. in the alphabetical order of the first letters of the poems), and