SOURCE: Garrison, Daniel H. “Meleager.” In Mild Frenzy: A Reading of the Hellenistic Love Epigram, pp. 71-93. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1978.

In the following essay, Garrison argues that Meleager used the epigrammatic form to express psychic depths in ways that transcended the form's traditional use.

Meleager and the Critics

An impressive and growing array of European scholars has for generations maintained a consensus that Meleager was a clever but shallow and uncreative poet. Because this judgment has been so widely agreed upon over the past eighty years, I would like to begin my discussion of Meleager with some examples of the adverse criticism as a background against which to offer some divergent observations.

Qu'est au juste l'esprit syrien, et pouvons-nous l'analyser? Je crois que oui. … [on the Syrians:] frères de Juifs, ils ont comme eux les passions vives, et, dans l'intelligence, moins d'originalité que de souplesse...