Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/175

Rh  the father of Bias, Melampus, and Aeola. (Apollod. i. 9. § 11, 7. § 7.) According to Pindar (Pyth. iv. 220, &c.), he and several other members of his family went to Iolcus to intercede with Pelias on behalf of Jason. Pausanias (v. 8. § 1) mentions him among those to whom the restoration of the Olympian games was ascribed.

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 AMYTHAO′NIUS, a patronymic from Amythaon, by which his son, the seer Melampus, is sometimes designated. (Virg. Georg. iii. 550; Columell. x. 348.) The descendants of Amythaon in general are called by the Greeks Amythaonidae. (Strab. viii. p. 372.)

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 A′MYTIS. 1. The daughter of Astyages, the wife of Cyrus, and the mother of Cambyses, according to Ctesias. (Pers. c. 2, 10, &c., ed. Lion.)

2. The daughter of Xerxes, the wife of Megabyzus, and the mother of Achaemenes, who perished in Egypt, according to Ctesias. (Pers. c. 20, 22, 28, 30, 36, 39, &c.)

 A′NACES. [, No. 2.]

 ANACHARSIS, a Scythian of princely rank, according to Herodotus (iv. 76), the son of Gnurus, and brother of Saulius, king of Thrace; according to Lucian (Scytha) the son of Daucetas. He left his native country to travel in pursuit of knowledge, and came to Athens just at the time that Solon was occupied with his legislative measures. He became acquainted with Solon, and by the simplicity of his way of living, his talents, and his acute observations on the institutions and usages of the Greeks, he excited general attention and admiration. The fame of his wisdom was such, that he was even reckoned by some among the seven sages. Some writers affirmed, that after having been honoured with the Athenian franchise, he was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. According to the account in Herodotus, on his return to Thrace, he was killed by his brother Saulius, while celebrating the orgies of Cybele at Hylaea. Diogenes Laertius gives a somewhat different version—that he was killed by his brother while hunting. He is said to have written a metrical work on legislation and the art of war. Cicero (Tusc. Disp. v. 32) quotes from one of his letters, of which several, though of doubtful authenticity, are still extant. Various sayings of his have been preserved by Diogenes and Athenaeus. (Herod, iv. 46, 76, 77; Plut. Sol. 5, Conviv. Sept. Sapient.; Diog. Laert. i. 101, &c.; Strab. vii. p. 303; Lucian, Scytha and Anacharsis; Athen. iv. p. 159, x. pp. 428, 437, xiv. p. 613; Aelian, V. H. v. 7.)

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 ANA′CREON, one of the principal Greek lyric poets, was a native of the Ionian city of Teos, in Asia Minor. The accounts of his life are meagre and confused, but he seems to have spent his youth at his native city, and to have removed, with the great body of its inhabitants, to Abdera, in Thrace, when Teos was taken by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus (about B. C. 540; Strab. xiv. p. 644). The early part of his middle life was spent at Samos, under the patronage of Polycrates, in whose praise Anacreon wrote many songs. (Strab. xiv. p. 638; Herod, iii. 121.) He enjoyed very high favour with the tyrant, and is said to have softened his temper by the charms of music. (Maxim. Tyr. Diss. xxxvii. 5.) After the death of Polycrates (B. C. 522), he went to Athens at the invitation of the tyrant Hipparchus, who sent a galley of fifty oars to fetch him. (Plat. Hipparch. p. 228.) At Athens he became acquainted with Simonides and other poets, whom the taste of Hipparchus had collected round him, and he was admitted to intimacy by other noble families besides the Peisistratidae, among whom he especially celebrated the beauty of Critias, the son of Dropides. (Plat. Charm. p. 157; Berghk's Anacreon, fr. 55.) He died at the age of 85, probably about B. C. 478. (Lucian, Macrob. c. 26.) Simonides wrote two epitaphs upon him (Anthol. Pal. vii. 24, 25), the Athenians set up his statue in the Acropolis (Paus. i. 25. § 1), and the Teians struck his portrait on their coins. (Visconti, Icon. Grecque, pl. iii. 6.) The place of his death, however, is uncertain. The second epitaph of Simonides appears to say clearly that he was buried at Teos, whither he is supposed to have returned after the death of Hipparchus (B. C. 514); but there is also a tradition that, after his return to Teos, he fled a second time to Abdera, in consequence of the revolt of Histiaeus. (B. C. 495; Suidas, s. v. and .) This tradition has, however, very probably arisen from a confusion with the original emigration of the Teians to Abdera.

The universal tradition of antiquity represents Anacreon as a most consummate voluptuary; and his poems prove the truth of the tradition. Though Athenaeus (x. p. 429) thought that their drunken tone was affected, arguing that the poet must have been tolerably sober while in the act of writing, it is plain that Anacreon sings of love and wine with hearty good will, and that his songs in honour of Polycrates came less from the heart than the expressions of his love for the beautiful youths whom the tyrant had gathered round him. (Anthol. Pal. vii. 25; Maxim. Tyr. Diss. xxvi. 1.) We see in him the luxury of the Ionian inflamed by the fervour of the poet. The tale that he loved Sappho is very improbable. (Athen. xiii. p. 599.) His death was worthy of his life, if we may believe the account, which looks, however, too like a poetical fiction, that he was choked by a grape-stone. (Plin. vii. 5; Val. Max. ix. 12. §8.) The idea formed of Anacreon by nearly all ancient writers, as a grey-haired old man, seems to have been derived from his later poems, in forgetfulness of the fact that when his fame was at its height, at the court of Polycrates, he was a very young man; the delusion being aided by the unabated warmth of his poetry to the very last.

In the time of Suidas five books of Anacreon's poems were extant, but of these only a few genuine fragments have come down to us. The "Odes" attributed to him are now universally admitted to be spurious. All of them are later than the time of Anacreon. Though some of them are very graceful, others are very deficient in poetical feeling; and all are wanting in the tone of earnestness which the poetry of Anacreon always breathed. The usual metre in these Odes is the Iambic Dimeter Catalectic, which occurs only once in the genuine fragments of Anacreon. His favourite metres are the Choriambic and the Ionic a Minore.

The editions of Anacreon are very numerous. The best are those of Brunck, Strasb. 1786; Fischer, Lips. 1793; Mehlhorn, Glogau, 1825; and Bergk, Lips. 1834.

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 ANACYNDARAXES, the father of Sardanapalus, king of Assyria. (Arrian, 