Syrian nard, the poet who sang of himself as Hermes' gift; and withal
Posidippus and Hedylus together, wild blossoms of the country, and the
blowing windflowers of the son of Sicelides; yea, and set therein the
golden bough of the ever divine Plato, shining everywhere in
excellence, and beside him Aratus the knower of the stars, cutting the
first-born spires of that heaven-high palm, and the fair-tressed lotus
of Chaeremon mixed with the gilliflower of Phaedimus, and the round
ox-eye of Antagoras, and the wine-loving fresh-blown wild thyme of
Theodorides, and the bean-blossoms of Phanias, and many newly-
scriptured shoots of others; and with them also even from his own Muse
some early white violets. But to my friends I give thanks; and the
sweet-languaged garland of the Muses is common to all initiate."

In this list three poets are not spoken of directly by name, but, from
metrical or other reasons, are alluded to paraphrastically. "He who
had his surname from the Dioscori" is Dioscorides; "the poet who sang
of himself as Hermes' gifts" is Hermodorus; and "the son of Sicelides"
is Asclepiades, referred to under the same name by his great pupil
Theocritus. The names of these forty-eight poets (including Meleager
himself) show that the collection embraced epigrams of all periods
from the earliest times up to his own day. Six belong to the early
period of the lyric poets, ending with the Persian wars; Archilochus,
who flourished about 700 B.C., Sappho and Erinna a century afterwards,
Simonides and Anacreon about 500 B.C., and a little later,
Bacchylides. Five more belong to the fourth century B.C., the period
which begins with the destruction of the Athenian empire and ends with
the establishment of the Macedonian kingdoms of the Diadochi. Of
these, Plato is still within the Athenian period; Hegesippus, Simmias,
Anyte, and Phaedimus, all towards the end of the century, mark the
beginning of the Alexandrian period. Four have completely disappeared