After the publication of The Garland of Philip in 1968, following that of Hellenistic Epigrams in 1965, Mr Gow and I discussed from time to time what the next step, if any, should be. Neither of us felt sufficiently familiar with the historical, social, and literary backgrounds to edit Palladas or the Cycle of Agathias. The ancient anthology of satirical epigrams comes next in time to Philip's Garland; but there remained one large area still to be cultivated in our former field. Our previous volumes were limited to authors who were represented in the anthologies compiled by Meleager and Philip (allowing a few exceptions), and we thought that it would be useful to complete the collection down to a.d. 50 by editing all the other epigrams composed during the period covered by those two anthologies.

Epigrams preserved in inscriptions are not included (unless they appear also in literary texts); partly because their editing requires the skill of the experienced epigraphist, partly because the bulk is enormous, and the great majority from the fourth century b.c. onwards is of low quality and little interest, partly because the texts of the greater part (the epitaphs) are already available in Peek's Griechische Vers-Inschriften. Many of those from the fifth century and earlier are of high quality, and I was about to include these, but abandoned this section half-finished when Dr P. A. Hansen announced his intention to edit them: see A List of Greek Verse Inscriptions down to 400 B.C. (Copenhagen 1975).