A Garland of Freshly Grown Flowers

Chapter 4 challenges the common view that Philip of Thessalonica was a second-rate editor in comparison to Meleager and illustrates, on the basis of select examples, the intricacy of his design. The alphabetical organization of his Garland, long thought to be purely mechanical, is shown to be a technical constraint that the author imposed upon himself so as to outdo the achievements of his predecessor: Within this external framework, Philip employed subtler modes of arrangement similar to Meleager’s editorial technique: juxtaposition of model and variation; interweaving of epigrams anchored in thematic, structural, verbal, or intertextual links; epigrammatic pairs or series on the same topic distributed across the collection; and clusters on key themes within individual letter groups.