ellauri058.html on line 799: The twelfth book of The Greek Anthology compiled at the court of Hadrian in the second century a.d. by a poetaster Straton, who like most anthologists included an immodest number of his own poems, is itself a part of a larger collection of short poems dating from the dawn of Greek lyric poetry (Alcaeus) down to its last florescence, which survived two Byzantine recensions to end up in a single manuscript in the library of the Count Palatine in Heidelberg — hence its alternative title, The Palatine Anthology, usually abbreviated to Anth. Pal. This particular, indeed special, collection contained in Book XII subtitled The Musa Paedika or Musa Puerilis, alternately from the Greek word for a child of either sex — and girls are not wholly absent from these pages — or the Latin for “boy,” consists of 258 epigrams on various aspects of Boy Love or, to recur to the Greek root, paederasty.
ellauri152.html on line 77: Although for the most part The Songs of Bilitis is original work, many of the poems were reworked epigrams from the Palatine Anthology, and Louÿs even borrowed some verses from Sappho herself. The poems are a blend of mellow sensuality and polished style in the manner of Parnassianism, but underneath run subtle Gallic undertones that Louÿs could never escape.
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