SOURCE: MacKail, J.W. Selected Epigrams from the Greek Anthology Edited with a Revised Text, Introduction, Translation, and Notes, pp. 12-13, 33-36. London, New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1890.

In the following excerpt, MacKail characterizes Meleager as a Greek epigrammatist whose Asiatic influences and detailed descriptions of the nuances of love set him apart from his contemporaries.

From the invention of writing onwards, the inscriptions on monuments and dedicated offerings supplied one of the chief materials of historical record. Their testimony was used by the earliest historians to supplement and reinforce the oral traditions which they embodied in their works. Herodotus and Thucydides quote early epigrams as authority for the history of past times;¹ and when in the latter part of the fourth century b.c. history became a serious study throughout Greece, collections of inscribed records, whether in prose or verse, began to be formed as historical...