Anthologies and Anthologists 101copied by Cephalas along with the rest of the Palladas Sylloge. Cephalas incor-
rectly ascribed to Leo the Philosopher two late antique poems, a cento and an
epic fragment, because he found them next to authentic poems by Leo and
erroneously assumed that they had been written by the same author. The
cento consists of Homeric tags. It is a girl’s complaint about the painful
experience of her defloration (AP IX, 361). The scabrous subject of this epi-
gram is without parallel in Byzantine poetry, for if the theme is touched upon
at all (for instance, in the Maximo scene in the Digenes Akrites), it is always
viewed from the angle of male superiority, not from the perspective of the girl.
Furthermore, all the other centos in the Greek Anthology date from late
antiquity^52 , and there is no evidence that Byzantine poets, apart from the
enigmatic author of the Christus Patiens, dabbled in the art of cento-writing.
True, there are some Byzantine poems that have a lot of Homeric reminiscenc-
es, such as AP XV, 12 (Leo the Philosopher), 28 (Anastasios Quaestor) and 40
(Kometas), but none of these poems are real centos. The second poem incor-
rectly ascribed to Leo the Philosopher, AP IX, 579, deals with Arethousa, the
famous Sicilian water nymph. It is a fragment of a late antique mythological
epic. As fragments rarely make sense, the poem is almost incomprehensible in
its present form^53. The Palladas Sylloge contained many epic fragments of this
kind, such as, for instance, some passages from the Metamorphoses of Nestor of
Laranda, all of which deal with aquatic subjects: rivers, sources, and so on^54.
The epic fragment on Arethousa might equally derive from the Metamor-
phoses^55 , but even if it does not, it can safely be dated to the period of late
antiquity and, therefore, cannot have been written by Leo the Philosopher.
These two false ascriptions leave no doubt that Cephalas read the Palladas
Sylloge in an updated version of the mid-ninth century composed by Leo the
Philosopher himself or copied at his behest. There are more shreds and pieces
of evidence indicating that Leo the Philosopher was familiar with ancient
epigrams and played a significant role in the text history of the Greek Anthol-
ogy. In a satirical poem on a stuttering student^56 he coins the word
(^52) AP IX, 381–382 and Appendix Barberino-Vaticana no. 7 (ed. CAMERON 1993: 172). See
also HUNGER 1978: II, 98–100.
(^53) See WESTERINK 1986: 195–196.
(^54) See the prooemium to the Metamorphoses (AP IX, 364); see also AP IX, 128–129 and
537.
(^55) AP IX, 536, which is probably a fragment of the Metamorphoses, also deals with the well-
known story of the river Alpheios who, desperately in love with Arethousa, glides under
the surface of the Adriatic to turn up again in Sicily. AP IX, 362, another epic fragment,
treats the same subject, but does not belong to the Metamorphoses as its hexameters are
post-Nonnian (see WIFSTRAND 1933: 168).
(^56) Ed. WESTERINK 1986: 200–201 (no. XI).