A
Greek lyric poet (c. 570-485 BCE) born in Teos,
Ionia. He was one of the founders of
Abdera in
Thrace along with the others Teans who fled the
Persian threats to subjugate
Ionia, but left it after a few years. He joined the court of
Polycrates,
tyrant of
Samos. According to some sources he and
Polycrates competed for the love of a
Thracian boy named Smerdies, whose hair
Polycrates cut off in a fit of jealousy. After the murder of
Polycrates by the
Persians, Anacreon left
Samos to
Athens, and found patronage with
Hipparchus, one of the two sons of
Peisistratus, who shared the tyranny in the
polis. According to
Plato he became the lover of the nobleman
Critias (grandfather of the famous oligarch politician
Critias). After
Hipparchus' murder he may have gone to
Thessaly. According to legend he died in a very old age (85 is mentioned), choking on a grape.
From the immense corpus of poetry he composed (his works were later collected in Alexandria into a book with six volumes), only a fragmant survived. He wrote in the Ionic dialect, and even in the few writings that reached us his writing seems effortless and is characterized by wittiness, ingenuity, delicacy, irony and self mockery. Most of the material that has survived are wine and love poems (mostly homosexual in nature, but some are heterosexual), but he also produced poisonous abuse in the iambic tradition. His wit and genius inspired a host of immitators during and after the Hellenistic era (the Anacreontea).
He invented the Anacreontic anaclisis in metrics and had it named after himself.