Plautius, ut possent specie numeroque senatum
Fallere, personis imperat ora tegi."
(Comp. Eckhel, vol. v. p. 276, &c.)
6. L, MUNATIUS Pl ANGUS, son of No. 2, was consul A. D. 13 with C. Silius. In the following year he was sent by the senate after the death of Augustus to the mutinous legions of Germanicus in the territory of the Ubii, and there narrowly escaped death at the hands of the soldiers (Dion Cass. Ivi. 28 ; Suet. Auc/.[; Tac. Ann. i. 39.)
PLANTA, POMPEIUS, praefect of Egypt in the reign of Trajan. (Plin. Ep. x. 7 or 5.)
PLANU'DES ((
Greek characters)), surnamed Maxi-
Mus, was one of the most learned of the Constan-
tinopolitan monks of the last age of the Greek
empire, and was greatly distinguished as a theolo-
gian, grammarian, and rhetorician ; but his name
is now chiefly interesting as that of the compiler
of the latest of those collections of minor Greek
poems, which were known by the names of Gar-
lands or Anthologies {'2,T(<pavoi, ^AvdoKoyiai). Pla-
nudes flourished at Constantinople in the first half
of the fourteenth century, under the emperors
Andronicus II. and III. Palaeologi. In A. D. 1327
he was sent by Andronicus II. as ambassador to
Venice. Nothing more is known of his life with
any certainty, except that he was somewhat dis-
posed to the tenets of the Roman Church, which,
however, a short imprisonment seems to have in-
duced him to renounce. (See Fabric. Biil. Graec.
vol. xi. p. 682, and the authorities quoted in
Harles's note.) His works, of which several only
exist in MS., are not of sufficient importance to
be enumerated individually. They consist of ora-
tions and homilies ; translations from Latin into
Greek of Cicero's Somnium Scipio7ns, Caesar de
Bella Gallico, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Cato's Dis-
ticlia Moralia, Boethius de Consolatione, St. Au-
gustin de Trinitate and de Cimtate Dei, and Dona-
tus's Grammatica Parva; two grammatical works ;
a collection of Aesop's Fables, with a worthless
Life of Aesop ; some arithmetical works, especially
Scholia, of no great value, on the first two books
of the Arithmetic of Diophantus ; a few works on
natural history ; Commentaries on the Rhetoric of
Hermogenes, and on other Greek writers ; a poem
in forty-seven hexameters, on Claudius Ptolemaeus,
and a few other poems ; and his Anthology. (See
Fabric, I.e. pp. 682—693, vol. i. p. 641, vol. vi.
p. 348 ; Hoffmann, Lexicon Bibliographicum
Script. Graec. s. v.) As the Anthology of Planudes
was not only the latest compiled, but was also that
which was recognised as 77ie Greek Anthology, until
the discovery of the Anthology of Constantinus
Cephalas, this is chosen as the fittest place for an
account of the
LITERARY HISTORY OF THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY.
1. Materials. The various collections, to which their compilers gave the name of Garlatids and Anthologies, were made up of short poems, chiefly I of an epigrammatic diameter, and in the elegiac I metre. The earliest examples of such poetry were, { doubtless, furnished by the inscriptions on monu- ments, such as those erected to commemorate heroic I deeds, the statues of distinguished men, especially !' victors in the public games, sepulchral monuments, and dedicatory offerings in temples (duaOrnxaTa) ; to which may be added oracles and proverbial say- us,»s. At an early period in the history of Greek °literature, poets of the highest fame cultivated this species of composition, which received its most perfect development from the hand of Simonides. Thenceforth, as a set form of poetry, it became a fit vehicle for the brief expression of thoughts and sentiments on any subject ; until at last the form came to be cultivated for its own sake, and the literati of Alexandria and Byzantium deemed the ability to make epigrams an essential part of the character of a scholar. Hence the mere trifling, the stupid jokes, and the wretched personalities, which form so large a part of the epigrammatic poetry contained in the Greek Anthology.
The monumental inscriptions, to which re-
ference has already been made, are often quoted by
the ancient writers as historical authorities, as, for
example, by Herodotus and Thucydides ; and by
later writers, such as Diodorus and Plutarch,
partly as authorities, partly to embellish their
works. This use of inscriptions would naturally
suggest the idea of collecting them. The earliest
known collection was made by the geographer
Polemon ^B. c. 200), in a work irepl twu Kurd
TToAeis cTTLypafJL/jLdrwv ( Ath. x. p. 436, d., p. 442, e.).
He also wrote other works, on votive offerings,
which are likely to have contained the epigram-
matic inscriptions on them. [Poleaion.] Simi-
lar collections were made by Alcetas, (Greek characters) (Ath. xiii. p. 591, c), by
Menestor, iv tc^ trepl dvadrjfxaTuv (Ath. xiii.
p. 594, d.), and perhaps by Apellas Ponticus.
These persons collected chiefly the inscriptions on
offerings ((Greek characters)) : epigrams of other kinds
were also collected, as the Theban Epigrams, by
Aristodemus {Schol. in Apoll. Rhod. ii. 906), the
Attic by Philochorus (Suid. s. v., the reading is,
however, somewhat doubtful), and others by
Neoptolemusof Paros (Ath. x. p 454, f.), and Eu-
hemerus (Lactant. hisiit. Div. i. 9 ; Cic. de Nat.
Deor. i. 42).
2. The Garland of Meleager. The above com-
pilers chiefly collected epigrams of particular
classes, and with reference to their use as historical
authorities. The first person who made such a
collection solely for its own sake, and to preserve
epigrams of all kinds, was Meleager, a cynic
philosopher of Gadara, in Palestine, about b. c. 60.
His collection contained epigrams by no less than
forty- six poets, of all ages of Greek poetry, up to
the most ancient lyric period. He entitled it The
Garland ((Greek characters)), with reference, of course, to
the common comparison of small beautiful poems
to flowers ; and in the introduction to his work,
he attaches the names of various flowers, shrubs,
and herbs, as emblems, to the names of the several
poets. The same idea is kept up in the word
Anthology ((Greek characters)), which was adopted by the
next compiler as the title of his work. The Garland of Meleager was arranged in alphabetical
order, according to the initial letters of the first
line of each epigram.
3. The Anthology of Philip of Thessalonica.—In
the time of Trajan, as it seems, Philip of Thessalonica compiled his Anthology ((Greek characters)),
avowedly in imitation of the Garland of Meleager,
and chiefly with the view of adding to that col-
lection the epigrams of more recent writers. The
arrangement of the work was the same as that of
Meleager. It was also entitled ((Greek characters), as well
as (Greek characters). Another title by which it is quoted
is (Greek characters)
