224
the Sidonian poet. Most of them are epideictic; a good many are on works of art and literature; there are some very beautiful epitaphs. There is in his work a tendency towards diffuseness which goes with his talent in improvisation mentioned by Cicero.
To this period seem to belong the following poets, of whom little or nothing is known: ARISTODICUS of Rhodes, author of two epigrams in the Palatine Anthology: ARISTON, author of three or four epigrams in the style of Leonidas of Tarentum: HERMOCREON, author of one dedication in the Palatine Anthology and another in Planudes: and TYMNES, author of seven epigrams in the Anthology, and included in the /Garland/ of Meleager, l. 19, with "the fair-foliaged white poplar" for his cognisance.
(5) MELEAGER son of Eucrates was born at the partially Hellenised town of Gadara in northern Palestine (the Ramoth-Gilead of the Old Testament), and educated at Tyre. His later life was spent in the island of Cos, where he died at an advanced age. The scholiast to the Palatine MS. says he flourished in the reign of the last Seleucus; this was Seleucus VI. Epiphanes, who reigned B.C. 95-93. The date of his celebrated Anthology cannot be much later, as it did not include the poems of his fellow-townsman Philodemus, who flourished about B.C. 60 or a little earlier. Like his contemporary Menippus, also a Gadarene, he wrote what were known as {spoudogeloia}, miscellaneous prose essays putting philosophy in popular form with humorous illustrations. These are completely lost, but we have fragments of the /Saturae Menippeae/ of Varro written in imitation of them, and they seem to have had a reputation like that of Addison and the English essayists of the eighteenth century. Meleager's fame however is securely founded on the one hundred and thirty-four epigrams of his own which he included in his Anthology. Some further account of the erotic epigrams, which are about four-fifths of the whole number, is given above. For all of these the MSS. of the Anthology are the sole source.<
Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology , page 223
by J.W. Mackail