of perfection than can be attained by any modern Europeans.  Jebb, for instance, takes twelve words—­“Well hath he spoken for one who giveth heed not to fall”—­to express a sentiment which Sophocles (OEd. Tyr. 616) is able to compress into four—­[Greek:  kalos elexen eulaboumeno pesein].  Moreover, albeit under the stress of metrical and linguistic necessity the translator must generally indulge in paraphrase, let him beware lest in doing so he sacrifices that quality in which the Greeks excelled, to wit, simplicity.  Nietzsche said, with great truth, “Die Griechen sind, wie das Genie, einfach; deshalb sind sie die unsterblichen Lehrer.”  Further, the translator has at times so to manipulate his material as to incorporate into his verse epithets and figures of speech of surpassing grace and expressiveness, which do not readily admit of transfiguration into any modern language; such, for instance, as the “much-wooed white-armed Maiden Muse” ([Greek:  polymneste leukolene parthene Mousa]) of Empedocles; the “long countless Time” ([Greek:  makros kanarithmetos Chronos]), or “babbling Echo” ([Greek:  athyrostomos Acho]) of Sophocles; the “son, the subject of many prayers” ([Greek:  polyeuchetos uios]) and countless other expressions of the Homeric Hymns; the “blooming Love with his pinions of gold” ([Greek:  ho d’ amphithales Eros chrysopteros henias]) of Aristophanes; “the eagle, messenger of wide-ruling Zeus, the lord of Thunder” ([Greek:  aietos, euryanaktos angelos Zenos erispharagou]) of Bacchylides; or mighty Pindar’s “snowy Etna nursing the whole year’s length her frozen snow” ([Greek:  niphoess’ Aitna panetes chionos oxeias tithena]).

In no branch of Greek literature are these difficulties more conspicuous than in the Anthology, yet it is the Anthology that has from time immemorial notably attracted the attention of translators.  It is indeed true that the compositions of Agathias, Palladas, Paulus Silentiarius, and the rest of the poetic tribe who “like the dun nightingale” were “insatiate of song” ([Greek:  oia tis xoutha akorestos boas ... aedon]), must, comparatively speaking, rank low amongst the priceless legacies which Greece bequeathed to a grateful posterity.  A considerable number of the writers whose works are comprised in the Anthology lived during the Alexandrian age.  The artificiality of French society before the French Revolution developed a taste for shallow versifying.  Somewhat similar symptoms characterised the decadent society of Alexandria, albeit there were occasions when a nobler note was struck, as in the splendid hymn of Cleanthes, written in the early part of the second century B.C.  Generally speaking, however, Professor Mahaffy’s criticism of the literature of this period (Greek Life and Thought, p. 264) holds good.  “We feel in most of these poems that it is no real lover languishing for his mistress, but a pedant posing before a critical public.  If ever poet was consoled by his muse, it was he; he was far prouder if Alexandria