Traditionally the history of Ancient Greek literature ends with Antiquity: after the fall of
Rome the literary works in ancient Greek generally belong to the domain of the Byzantine
Empire. However after the Byzantine refugees restored the knowledge of Ancient Greek in the
west during the early humanistic period (15th century) Italian scholars (and later their
French German Spanish colleagues) started to use Greek a purely literary language that no
one spoke for their own texts and poems. This habit persisted with various ups and downs
throughout the centuries according to the development of Greek studies in each country. The
aim of this anthology - the first one of this kind - is to give a selective overview of this
kind of humanistic poetry in Ancient Greek embracing all major regions of Europe and trying to
concentrate on remarkable pieces of important poets. The ultimate goal of the book is to shed
light on an important and so far mostly neglected aspect of the European heritage.
