the celebrated lyric poet, was born at Teos, an Ionian city in Asia Minor, about the year B.C. 560. Of his personal history little is known; but it would appear that his early youth was passed at Teos; and when Ionia fell under the Persian yoke, about B.C. 540, he migrated with many of his countrymen to Abdera in Thrace. In the same year he went to Samos, in consequence of an invitation from Polycrates the tyrant, by whom he was treated with great distinction and regard, and loaded with favours, which the poet repaid by praises in many of his songs. His residence at the splendid court of Polycrates was the happiest period of his life. On the murder of his friend and patron, in B.C. 522, he was invited to Athens by Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus, who is said by Plato to have sent a galley of fifty oars for his conveyance. (*Hipparch*, p. 228.) At Athens he became acquainted with the younger Simonides and several other poets, and enjoyed the intimacy of many illustrious persons in that city. Anacreon is said to have perished by choking on the stone of a grape, in the 86th year of his age; and judging from the second of his two epitaphs by Simonides, that event took place at Teos, whether he is supposed to have retired on the death of Hippocrates in B.C. 514. The Athenians erected on the acropolis a statue representing Anacreon in a state of bacchanalian joyousness; and his effigy appears on several coins of Teos, which are still extant. The story of his passion for Sappho involves an anachronism that would appear to render it a fiction.

The harp of Anacreon was strang to the praises of beauty, love, and wine; and we are enabled to form some estimate of his genius from the numerous fragments of his poetry that time has spared. Though he continually alludes to wine as the source of his inspiration, Athenaeus (x. 429) argues, with much propriety, that the poet merely affected inebriation in the composition of his celebrated dithyrambs. Indeed, from the tenor of his writings, it has very generally been assumed that the poet himself was the votary of voluptuousness and excess; though against this most natural inference we have the testimony of many writers, who ascribe to Anacreon the highest merits, not only as a poet, but also as a man. His rejection of the munificent presents of Polycrates, as not worthy the anxieties they entailed, is a circumstance certainly in his favour; and scarcely less so is the praise of Plato, who dignifies the poet with the epithet of "wise." Simonides, also, in a fragment still extant, places his character in a very favourable light. (See *Anthol. Palat.* vii. 25.) Yet, in spite of all this testimony, when we reflect on the inherent tendency of our nature to exalt the characters of extraordinary men, though we may allow Anacreon to have possessed many merits, it is impossible, on an impartial review of his writings, to elude the conviction that he was in fact a consummate voluptuary.

Five books of Anacreon's odes were extant in the time of Plutarch and Athenaeus; and these were sung on all festive occasions to music composed by the poet himself. He also wrote elegies, hymns, satires, and epigrams; of which last several are preserved in the *Anthologia Graeca*. All his poems were written in the Ionic dialect; his favourite metres being the Choriambic and the Ionic a Minore. A collection of fifty-five odes ascribed to Anacreon was first published by H. Stephens at Paris, in 1554, and subsequently by Maittaire, by Spaletti with a fac-simile of the Vatican MS., by Brunck, and others. It is now universally admitted that most, if not all, of these poems are spurious. They probably were written soon after the time of Alexander the Great, and some of them even so late perhaps as the fourth and fifth centuries of our era. Though many of these poems display considerable elegance, they are deficient Anacreon-in that vigour and earnest tone which characterize the true Verse genuine remains: the versification is sometimes defective, and the language occasionally barbarous; not to mention Anagais, that they contain ideas altogether foreign to the age of Anacreon, and afford but one solitary example of the numerous citations from this poet by ancient writers. Some valuable observations on this subject are given by Fischer in the preface to his second edition of Anacreon, published at Leipzig in 1776, which contains this collection, together with the genuine remains. The best editions are by Melhorn, Glogau, 1825; Fischer, 3d edition, Leipzig, 1793; Brunck, 2d edition, Strasburg, 1786; and of the separate fragments, that of Bergk, Leipzig, 1834.