Anthologies and Anthologists 89methods are not entirely clear to us; he may have used file cards in order to
avoid duplications and he may have had some assistance from fellow scholars,
such as Gregory of Kampsa and the anonymous ™klex1menoß whom the Correc-
tor criticizes at AP IX, 16 for his stupidity. Cephalas has not been spared the
scorn of modern schoolmasters, who crudely accuse him of aggravating negli-
gence, ignorance and sloppiness. But taking into account the size of the mate-
rial he was working with and the number of mistakes he could have made, but
did not make, these criticisms hardly seem justified. In fact, the fortunes or
mishaps of Cephalas’ scholarly work should be judged, if at all, against the
background of other ninth- and tenth-century compilations, such as the corpus
of short poems attributed to Theognis or the various gnomologies compiled in
this period^20. Short texts need to be rearranged in such a manner that an
anthology or gnomology appears to assume a logical, almost natural coherence;
but this seemingly coherent system of classification is, of course, the work of an
individual anthologist, who superimposes his own interpretation of, and adds
signification to, the texts he is rearranging. In the following, I shall try to
characterize the various anthologists who contributed to the Greek Anthology.
**
*
A Collection of Christian Epigrams: AP I
The Christian epigrams in AP I^21 were copied by scribes J and A^1 , who
apparently cooperated and wrote the text in shifts. Taking into account the
scribal error at AP I, 116, it is beyond doubt that the collection of Christian
epigrams was not compiled by scribe J himself, but already existed in manu-
script form. On pp. 61–62 we find the following epigrams: AP I, 115; 116. 1–2
(with an asterisk indicating that it should be deleted); 116. 3–4; and 30 (dupli-
cated here). The text of AP I, 116. 1–2 should indeed have been deleted in
modern editions. It begins with the first words of I, 30 and ends with the last
words of I, 116. 3–4. Here we have a classic example of haplography, caused by
sources he used, the Palladas Sylloge, contained a great number of protreptic epigrams.
Cephalas added the category of paederastica (for obvious reasons absent from the Cycle
of Agathias) because of the many epigrams of this kind found in one of his sources, the
Boyish Muse of Strato of Sardis. See LAUXTERMANN 1998c: 527–528 and 535–536.(^20) For the late ninth-century edition of Theognis, see M.L. WEST, Studies in Greek Elegy
and Iambus. Berlin–New York 1974, 44–45. For ninth- and tenth-century gnomologies,
see ODORICO 1986: 3–28.
(^21) For studies on AP I, see especially WALTZ 1925, BAUER 1960–1961 and BALDWIN 1996.