Anthologies and Anthologists 127ontea, probably dating from the sixth century, a copy of which is found in the
Palatine manuscript^143.
Without the Anthologia Barberina we would know practically nothing
about the history of the Byzantine anacreontic. Though he never inspected the
manuscript, Nissen’s famous monograph on the Byzantine anacreontic is es-
sentially a study of the Anthologia Barberina. It is an excellent account of the
historical development of the anacreontic, but it could have been much better,
had he studied the manuscript and its index instead of relying on unreliable
editions (such as, notably, the Anecdota Graeca by Matranga)^144.
The Anthologia Barberina has little in common with the Greek Anthology.
Whereas Cephalas collected ancient epigrams, AB is basically an anthology of
Byzantine poems. Cephalas stops at c. 600 (with some exceptions); AB literally
begins at c. 600 with the anacreontics of Sophronios. Cephalas includes the
epigrams of Agathias and his circle because they clearly imitate Hellenistic
models; but AB contains the poems of John of Gaza and George the Grammar-
ian because they form the prelude to the Byzantine anacreontic. And while the
Palatine manuscript contains the collection of Anacreontea in full, AB has only
a mere selection.
However, the most revolutionary aspect to the Anthologia Barberina is
most certainly the inclusion of a large corpus of poems in accentual metres (the
paired heptasyllable, the paired octosyllable, and probably also the political
verse)^145. These alphabets were added to the collection of anacreontics because
both categories, alphabets and anacreontics, were intended for musical per-
formance^146. The Anthologia Barberina is in fact a collection of lyrics. It is a
songbook without musical notation. The only parallel to this songbook in
tenth-century Byzantium is the famous Book of Ceremonies, where we also find
numerous librettos with hardly any indication of how these acclamations may
have sounded^147. However, whereas the Book of Ceremonies contains texts for
(^143) See M.L. WEST, Carmina Anacreontea. Leipzig 1984, X–XI.
(^144) All the poems in Barb. gr. 310 have now been edited properly: GIGANTE 1957, CRIMI 1990,
and CICCOLELLA 1998, 2000a and 2000b. But we still need a comprehensive edition of the
Anthologia Barberina, including the index, all the poems still extant in the manuscript as
well as the poems that are no longer there, but which can be found in other manuscripts.
(^145) See LAUXTERMANN 1999c: 48–51.
(^146) For the musical performance of the alphabets, see the lemmata attached to AB 134–138.
Zonaras, Life of Sophronios (see NISSEN 1940: 5, n. 2), informs us that Sophronios’
anacreontics were meant to be sung; cf. the title of Elias’ anacreontic, AB 24; see P.
SPECK, Das geteilte Dossier. Bonn 1988, 364–365.
(^147) For a metrical analysis of some of the acclamations, see LAUXTERMANN 1999c: 61–65. For
the musical performance of the acclamations, see J. HANDSCHIN, Das Zeremonienwerk
Kaiser Konstantins und die sangbare Dichtung. Basel 1942 and E. WELLESZ, A History
of Byzantine Music and Hymnography. Oxford^2 1961, 98–122.