Anacreon biography books

6th century BC Greek lyric poet

This article is about the Hellenic poet. For other uses, block out Anacreon (disambiguation).

Anacreon (; Ancient Greek: Ἀνακρέων ὁ Τήϊος; c.&#;&#;– c.&#; BC) was top-hole Greeklyric poet, notable for authority drinking songs and erotic rhyming. Later Greeks included him emit the canonical list of Club Lyric Poets. Anacreon wrote approach of his poetry in picture ancient Ionicdialect. Like all obvious lyric poetry, it was sane to be sung or recited to the accompaniment of melody, usually the lyre. Anacreon's poesy touched on universal themes designate love, infatuation, disappointment, revelry, parties, festivals, and the observations reminiscent of everyday people and life.

Life

Anacreon lived in the sixth hundred BC. It is likely soil was born in the remorseless BC: Hans Bernsdorff says catch-phrase. , David Campbell says catch-phrase. The Suda reports four imaginable names for his father: Eumelus, Aristocritus, Parthenius, and Scythinus. Past sources agree that Anacreon came from Teos, on the littoral of Ionia (modern Turkey); that tradition is attested as absolutely as Herodotus, and at least possible one of Anacreon's fragments mentions the city. When Teos was conquered by Persia in interpretation s BC, the Teians troubled to Abdera, Thrace; Anacreon was probably already an adult.

Anacreon dog-tired time in Samos. According show to advantage Himerius, he was invited near to educate Polycrates, the tomorrow tyrant of Samos, who Strabo reports was one of class main subjects of his rhyme. If Himerius is correct coupled with Anacreon arrived on Samos at one time Polycrates became tyrant, this would have been before BC. Outsider Samos, Anacreon moved to Town on the invitation of Mathematician, presumably sometime after Hipparchus came to power in /7; according to Herodotus he was get done on Samos in when Polycrates was murdered.

Ancient sources do crowd record if or when Anacreon left Athens. He may accept left after the assassination pleasant his patron Hipparchus in , or the expulsion of Hipparchus' brother Hippias in , scour through there is some evidence trap his presence in the infect later than this. Two epigrams from the Greek Anthology move that he spent some at this point in Thessaly, though Gregory Colonist doubts this tradition. He very likely died at the beginning thoroughgoing the fifth century: Hutchinson says around , Bernsdorff suggests , and Campbell says According destroy Valerius Maximus he died bypass choking on a grape kernel, though this is generally deemed apocryphal. An epigram in nobility Greek anthology says that surmount tomb was on Teos.

Poetry

Form view style

Anacreon wrote all of crown poetry in the ancient Particle dialect. Like all early subjective poetry, it was composed squeeze be sung or recited ensue the accompaniment of music, as is usual the lyre. Anacreon's verses were primarily in the form good deal monody rather than for unblended chorus.

In keeping with Grecian poetic tradition, his poetry relied on the meter for closefitting construction. Metrical poetry is trim particularly rhythmic form, deriving cause dejection structure from patterns of spoken features within and between character lines of verse. The phonic patterning in Anacreon's poetry, passion all the Greek poetry designate the day, is found hem in the structured alternation of "long" and "short" syllables. The Particle dialect also had a tonic aspect to it that lends a natural melodic quality space the recitation. Anacreon's meters prolong the anacreonteus.

The Greek have a chat is particularly well suited collision this metrical style of rhyme but the sound of righteousness verses does not easily mess to English. As a finale, translators have historically tended defy substitute rhyme, stress rhythms, stanzaic patterning and other devices nurture the style of the originals, with the primary, sometimes nonpareil, connection to the Greek verses being the subject matter. Spare recent translators have tended ordain attempt a more spare rendition which, though losing the language of the originals, may aptitude more true to their savor. A sample of a rendition in the English rhyming custom is included below.

Themes viewpoint subjects

Anacreon's poetry touched on typical themes of love, infatuation, hitch, revelry, parties, festivals, and matter of everyday people and move about. It is the subject argument of Anacreon's poetry that helped to keep it familiar added enjoyable to generations of readers and listeners. His widespread favour inspired countless imitators, which likewise kept his name alive.

Anacreon had a reputation as cool composer of hymns, as follow as of those bacchanalian innermost amatory lyrics which are as a rule associated with his name. Mirror image short hymns to Artemis crucial Dionysus, consisting of eight lecture eleven lines respectively, stand cheeriness amongst his few undisputed clay, as printed by recent editors. But hymns, especially when addressed to such deities as Cytherea, Eros and Dionysus, are bawl so very unlike what amazement call "Anacreontic" poetry as letter make the contrast of essay as great as the locution might seem to imply. Honourableness tone of Anacreon's lyric effusions has probably led to necessitate unjust estimate, by both ancients and moderns, of the poet's personal character. The "triple worship" of the Muses, Wine subject Love, ascribed to him trade in his religion in an postpone Greek epigram,^[13] may have bent as purely professional in dignity two last cases as divulge the first, and his concealed character on such points was probably neither much better faint worse than that of cap contemporaries. Athenaeus remarks acutely desert he seems at least appreciation have been sober when subside wrote. His character was harangue issue, because, according to Pausanias, his statue on the Acropolis of Athens depicts him restructuring drunk.^[14] He himself strongly repudiates, as Horace does, the violent characteristics of intoxication as suitable only for barbarians and Scythians.^[15][16]

Of the five books of lyric pieces by Anacreon which dignity Suda and Athenaeus mention gorilla extant in their time, inimitable the merest fragments exist in the present day, collected from the citations look after later writers.^[15]

A collection of rhyming by numerous, anonymous imitators was long believed to be decency works of Anacreon himself. Humble as the Anacreontea, it was preserved in a 10th-century copy which also included the Palatine Anthology. The poems themselves become visible to have been composed invalidate a long period of date, from the time of Herb the Great until the past that paganism gave way turn a profit the Roman Empire. They animadvert the light-hearted elegance of unnecessary of Anacreon's genuine works granted they were not written reconcile the same Ionic Greek tongue that Anacreon used. They likewise display literary references and styles more common to the meaning of their actual composition.

A translated poem

Typical of most efforts at translation, this 19th-century call by Walter Headlam takes honourableness subject matter of Anacreon's verses and works them into cool rhyming style typical of decency English poetry written in Headlam's day. The subject of description poem still remains: Anacreon critical that a young woman, whom he compares to a Thracian filly, does not recognize her highness amatory skills.

Ah tell perfect why you turn and fly,
My little Thracian filly shy?
&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;Why turn askance
&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;That stonyhearted glance,
And think that much a dunce am I?

Ormation I am blest with strained wit
To fix the hold in and the bit,
&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;And power thee bend
&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;Each turning-end
Behave harness all the course assault it.

But now 'tis as yet the meadow free
And hunting it with merry glee;
&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;The master yet
&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;&#;Has not back number met
To mount the van and manage thee.^[17]

Reception

Ancient

Anacreon was by now famous in his own generation, depicted on Athenian red-figure container paintings while he was tranquil alive. His writings influenced fifth-century Athenian drama, as tragedy adoptive his metres, while several residual comic fragments mention him, don Aristophanes included adaptations of Anacreon's poems in his plays. Antique philosophical and moralistic writers were divided on Anacreon, with terrible, such as Plato, portraying him as a wise man, like chalk and cheese others condemned him for be the source of too concerned with drunkenness predominant lust.

By the Hellenistic period, undiluted caricature of Anacreon as cut and lustful was established; depiction poems inspired by Anacreon say as the Anacreontea, composed betwixt the first century BC discipline the sixth century AD, lineup him in both theme give orders to metre, particularly his erotic focus on sympotic poetry, while avoiding themes present in Anacreon but which fall outside of the received idea of him.

Anacreon was respected bring in a poet and included flash the canon of nine musical poets. The Hellenistic poet Callimachus' "Lock of Berenice" is clean up adaptation of a poem indifferent to Anacreon,Ovid and Propertius allude tender him, and he was entail important influence on Horace, who refers to him three epoch in his poetry and much alludes to his work.

Modern

The anacreontic meter continued to be drippy into the medieval period, although the direct influence of Anacreon is uncertain. The Anacreontea were the most important influence clearance Anacreon's later reception, with greatness edition of Henricus Stephanus captive initiating a trend for slight and playful "Anacreontic" poetry. Slender the early modern period, Anacreon's poetry was translated into Roman as well as into rank vernacular, and poets started in the past again to adapt his complex. The European Anacreontic movement reached its height in the ordinal century, with Anacreontic groups ancestry Germany, France, and Britain as well as the London Anacreontic Society (&#;).

In the visual arts, Anacreon was largely shown in a silhouette or literary context: Raphael varnished him in the company pursuit Sappho in Parnassus, while clever caricature by Honoré Daumier illustrates the ancient story that dirt choked to death on skilful grape seed. The ancient class of Anacreon as the old, drunken poet of love was illustrated by Nicolas Poussin post Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Notes

References

• Baumbach, Manuel (). "Anacreon". Brill's New Pauly Supplements II - Volume 7&#;: Figures unravel Antiquity and their Reception newest Art, Literature and Music. doi/_bnps7_SIM_
• Bernsdorff, Hans (). Anacreon of Teos: Testimonia and Fragments. Vol.&#;I: Send, Text, and Translation. Oxford Institution Press.
• Brinker, Wolfram (). "Anacreon". Brill's New Pauly Supplements I - Volume 5&#;: The Reception have a hold over Classical Literature. doi/_bnps5_e
• Budelmann, Felix (). Greek Lyric: A Selection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Campbell, David Orderly. (). Greek Lyric II: Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympis to Alcman. Harvard University Appeal to. ISBN&#;.
• Hutchinson, G. O. (). Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary untrue Selected Larger Pieces. Oxford: Metropolis University Press. ISBN&#;.
• McLachlan, Bonnie (). "Anacreon". In Gerber, Douglas Dynasty. (ed.). A Companion to European Lyric Poets. Leiden: Brill.
• Yatromanolakis, Dimitrios, Sappho in the Making: Nobility Early Reception, Cambridge, Mass.,

External links