ANACREON

(B.C. 562?-477)


[Illustration: ANACREON]

Of the life of this lyric poet we have little exact knowledge. We know
that he was an Ionian Greek, and therefore by racial type a
luxury-loving, music-loving Greek, born in the city of Teos on the coast
of Asia Minor. The year was probably B.C. 562. With a few
fellow-citizens, it is supposed that he fled to Thrace and founded
Abdera when Cyrus the Great, or his general Harpagus, was conquering the
Greek cities of the coast. Abdera, however, was too new to afford
luxurious living, and the singing Ionian soon found his way to more
genial Samos, whither the fortunes of the world then seemed converging.
Polycrates was "tyrant," in the old Greek sense of irresponsible ruler;
but withal so large-minded and far-sighted a man that we may use a trite
comparison and say that under him his island was, to the rest of Greece,
as Florence in the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent was to the rest of
Italy, or Athens in the time of Pericles to the other Hellenic States.
Anacreon became his tutor, and may have been of his council; for
Herodotus says that when Oroetes went to see Polycrates he found him in
the men's apartment with Anacreon the Teian. Another historian says that
he tempered the stern will of the ruler. Still another relates that
Polycrates once presented him with five talents, but that the poet
returned the sum after two nights made sleepless from thinking what he
would do with his riches, saying "it was not worth the care it cost."

After the murder of Polycrates, Hipparchus, who ruled at Athens, sent a