Spanning from the eighth to the third century B.C., included here are four poets (Archilochos, Sappho, Alkman and Anakreon), two philosophers (Herakleitos and Diogenes, the Cynic philospher), and Herondas, who wrote comic skits. Almost all of the above survive only in fragments found in pot shards, scraps of papyrus used to wrap mummies and quotations by grammarians and others. Davenport puts brackets in the gaps where missing and illegible words were found. Some fragments consist of only one word: rhinoceros, nightingale, imposter, grape, plums, naked. It lends a poignancy to many of these ruins of once magnificent structures.

Among the poets represented I regret most those gaps with Archilochos and Sappho. Both of them despite the fragmentary nature of what survived come through as personalities and amazing poets--in what couldn't be a wider contrast. Archilochos was a mercenary with what Davenport calls a "nettle tongue;" there was a legend wasps hovered over his grave. I definitely can see the soldier here--often biting, crude, lewd, blunt. The most striking (and possibly complete) poem, Number 43 is comic and frankly erotic at once. Sappho is the great lyric poet of antiquity. Plato called her the "tenth muse." She's Archilochos opposite pole, vernal, refined--but like him at times frank in speaking of desire.

Both philosophers were standouts, despite that all that Davenport can provide are a couple of lines or short passages. Herakeitos, according to Karl Popper a forerunner of Plato, wrote on the theme of change. His sayings remind me of Ecclesiastes, or a Buddhist sage: One cannot step twice into the same river, for the water into which you first stepped has flowed on. And I loved, loved, loved Diogenes, who often made me smile madly with delight. What he said about, and to, such people as Plato and Alexander the Great! ("I've seen Plato's cups and table, but not his cupness and tableness.")

I wasn't impressed with the 7 complete and fragments of skits by Herondas, and the verse of Alkman and Anakreon didn't speak to me the way those of Archilochos and Sappho did. But this is definitely a book I consider a keeper. ( )