Florilegium, anthologia. Appunti per la storia di due termini gemelli

Abstract

It is already known that the Latin words florilegium and anthologia appear only in modern times, but their origins have never been enquired in a detailed fashion. The explorations put forth in this paper offer an attempt to precise these origins, placing more firmly the first occurences of the two terms at the beginning of the 16th century. Moreover, as a preamble to the enquiry, we offer a short historical and bibliographical outline of Greek and Latin compilations in ancient and late-antique literature and a concise analysis of the ancient Latin vocabulary employed in this field.