Anthologies and Anthologists 123Palatine Anthology we would know hardly anything about the hundred years of
classicism, but Constantine the Rhodian himself had nothing to do with this
cultural movement. In fact, he definitely was an exponent of Byzantine “mod-
ernism” – the feeling of being Byzantine and the tendency to articulate this
feeling in ways that run counter to the stifling rules of classicism.
**
*
The Anthologia Barberina
The history of the Greek Anthology from Leo the Philosopher to Constan-
tine the Rhodian, as sketched in the above, would certainly present a distorted
image of the cultural life in Constantinople in the years between 850 and 950,
if people were to think that the key concept of classicism suffices to explain all
the cultural phenomena of this period. For, as I stated previously, divergent
styles and ideological preferences co-exist in Byzantium without any presump-
tion to be mutually exclusive. In the following I shall discuss an early tenth-
century anthology that is definitely not classicistic.
Barb. gr. 310 is a small-size parchment manuscript of great beauty written
in the second half of the tenth century^133. The manuscript is extremely pre-
cious, not only because of its elegant layout and handwriting, but also because
of its contents. The manuscript used to contain a highly interesting collection
of anacreontics and alphabets, which regrettably has not been preserved
entirely because of the loss of some twenty-five quires. Fortunately, however,
the index of the manuscript is still there to inform us what the manuscript
contained before it was badly damaged. Some fifteen years ago the late Galla-
votti produced an admirable edition of the index, together with a lucid and
very learned commentary^134. I follow his numbering and I use the name that he
invented to christen the collection of anacreontics and alphabets: Anthologia
Barberina (AB).
The Anthologia Barberina is divided into two parts: nos. 1–80 and 81–160;
the former contains anacreontics and the latter alphabets in accentual me-
tres^135. The layout of the two parts of the manuscript differs strongly. The
alphabets are not written line by line, but continuously, without any regard for
the metrical structure; the musical mode to which they are set is indicated in
the manuscript and the names of the authors are written in the margin. The
(^133) See M.L. AGATI, Byz 54 (1984) 615–625 and 55 (1985) 584–588.
(^134) GALLAVOTTI 1987.
(^135) See GALLAVOTTI 1987: 60–70. See also CRIMI 2001: 28–51.