was Philippus of Thessalonica. Of this also the proem is
preserved.[13] It purports to be a collection of the epigrammatists
since Meleager, and is dedicated to the Roman patron of the author,
one Camillus. The proem runs thus:

"Having plucked for thee Heliconian flowers, and cut the first-blown
blossoms of famous-forested Pieria, and reaped the ears from modern
pages, I wove a rival garland, to be like those of Meleager; but do
thou, noble Cantillus, who knowest the fame of the older poets, know
likewise the short pieces of the younger. Antipater's corn-ear shall
grace our garland, and Crinagoras like an ivy-cluster; Antiphilus
shall glow like a grape-bunch, Tullius like melilote, Philodemus like
marjoram: and Parmenio myrtle-berries: Antiphanes as a rose: Automedon
ivy, Zonas lilies, Bianor oak, Antigonus olive, and Diodorus violet.
Liken thou Euenus to laurel, and the multitude woven in with these to
what fresh-blown flowers thou wilt."

One sees here the decline of the art from its first exquisiteness.
There is no selection or appropriateness in the names of the flowers
chosen, and the verse is managed baldly and clumsily. Philippus' own
epigrams, of which over seventy are extant, are generally rather dull,
chiefly school exercises, and, in the phrase of Jacobs, /imitatione
magis quam inventione conspicua/. But we owe to him the preservation
of a large mass of work belonging to the Roman period. The date of
Philippus cannot be fixed very precisely. His own epigrams contain no
certain allusion to any date other than the reign of Augustus. Of the
poets named in his proem, Antiphanes, Euenus, Parmenio, and Tullius
have no date determinable from internal evidence. Antigonus has been
sometimes identified with Antigonus of Carystus, the author of the
{Paradokon Sunagoge}, who lived in the third century B.C. under