Anthology of Planudes

The Anthology of Planudes (also called Planudean Anthology, in Latin Anthologia Planudea or sometimes in Greek Ἀνθολογία διαφόρων ἐπιγραμμάτων "Anthology of various epigrams", from the first line of the manuscript), is an anthology of Greek epigrams and poems compiled by Maximus Planudes, a Byzantine grammarian and theologian, based on the Anthology of Cephalas. It comprises 2,400 epigrams.

The Anthology of Planudes starts with the text: «Ανθολογία διαφόρων επιγραμμάτων, συντεθειμένων σοφοίς, επί διαφόροις υποθέσεσιν ...» (Anthology of various epigrams, created by wise people, about different subjects ...) and consists of seven books.

It can be found in an autograph copy of Planudes in Biblioteca Marciana (codex Marcianus gr. 481) in Venice but also in two apographs, one in an incomplete edition (in London, BM Add. 16409) and the other in the final edition of the anthology (which is only in fragmentary form, in Paris, Paris B.N. gr. 2744), as well as in several printed editions.

Several printed copies of the Planudean Anthology were made, as it was the only known anthology of Greek epigrams and poems until 1606, when the Palatine Anthology manuscript was found.

The anthology is today part of the corpus of texts known today as the Greek Anthology. The 397 epigrams not found in the Palatine Anthology (also mentioned as 395 and often as 388) are usually included in the Greek Anthology as the Appendix Planudea.

Even though the Planudean Anthology is based in the Anthology of Cephalas, the comparison with the Palatine Anthology (also based on Cephalas's anthology) shown that not only several poems and epigrams were omitted (Palatine has 3700 epigrams, while the Planudean only 2400), but also several mistakes have been made or "corrections" by Planudes. In the beginning the transcription was done accurately, however, after a certain point omissions become more and more as if the author lost his interest or was pressed to finalize the books. As a result, when the much more accurate Palatine Anthology was discovered, the interest of researchers was shifted from the Anthology of Planudes to the Palatine. The only important element of the Planudean Anthology since are the 388 epigrams not found in the Palatine, which are considered to have been part of the Anthology of Cephalas, but for an unknown reason were not transcribed in the Palatine Anthology.

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