The word "anthology" has an ancient Greek origin and literally means "flower garden" or "bouquet of flowers". However, it is used mainly in a figurative sense.
Anthologies of Ancient and Medieval Era
The term "anthology" denotes a collection of small-volume literary works - stories, poems, essays, created by different authors. As a rule, when compiling such literary collections, works are combined by genre or topic.
Preserved information about anthologies compiled by the inhabitants of ancient Greece. For example, various written sources mention collections of aphorisms and epigraphs that were created by Meleager from Godara, Philip from Thessalonica, Straton from Sardis, Diogenian from Heraclea. It is also known that similar collections were created by some ancient Roman authors. Unfortunately, these works have not survived in the original to this day.
The oldest of the anthologies, which has survived to the present time, dates back to the 10th century. It's called the Palatine Anthology. This anthology was compiled by Constantin Kefala. When working on this collection, Kefala used the works of his predecessors. Subsequently, the anthology of Kefala was rewritten many times. And the Constantinople monk Maxim Plound in the XIV century chose part of the works from it, supplemented it with a large number of epigrams and several poems, after which he published it under the guise of his own anthology.
At the end of the 16th century, Joseph Scaliger published the anthology Catalecta veterum poetarum, including excerpts from ancient Roman writings. Pierre Pitu then published two more anthology collections. These books were subsequently reprinted several times.
The Eastern peoples also had numerous examples of such literature. For example, the famous Chinese sage and philosopher Confucius is credited with the authorship of the Shih Jing anthology. The custom of compiling these collections was characteristic of the Arabs. After their conquest of Persia, Persian authors also adopted this habit, creating a number of poetry collections. And already from the Persians, it was adopted by numerous neighbors, including the Ottoman Turks and Hindus.
What are modern anthologies
Currently, anthological collections usually include selected poems or prose works of a small volume (as a rule, these are stories, but there may also be essays, essays). They can also consist of critical articles by literary scholars, biographies, etc. This form of literature, as anthology, is very popular in Western Europe.