Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/204

182 182 HISTORY OP THE point ; he must also have been advanced in years, as his name was, among the ancients, always connected with the idea of an old man, whose grey hairs did not interfere with his gaiety and pursuit of plea- sure. It is, indeed, stated, that Anacreon was still alive at the revolt of the Ionians, caused by Histiaeus, and that being driven from Teos, he took refuse in Abdera *. But as this event happened in Olympiad 71.3. B. c. 494, about 35 years after Anacreon's residence with Polycrates, the statement must be incorrect ; and it appears to have arisen from a confusion between the subjugation of the Ionians by Cyrus, and the suppression of their revolt under Darius. From an inscription for the tomb of Anacreon in Teos, attributed to Simonidest, it is inferred that he returned in his old age to Teos, which had been again peopled under the Persian government. But the monuments which were erected to celebrated men in their own country were often merely cenotaphs; and this epitaph may perhaps, like many others bearing the name of Simo- nides, have been composed centuries after the time of that poet J. It is probable that Anacreon, when he had once become known as the welcome guest of the richest and most powerful men of Greece, and when his social qualities had acquired general fame, was courted and invited by princes in other parts of Greece. It is intimated in an epigram that he was intimately connected with the Aleuads, the ruling family in Thessaly, who at that time added great zeal for art and literature to the hospitable and convivial qualities of their nation. This epigram refers to a votive offering of the Thessalian prince Echecratides, doubtless the person whose son Orestes, in Olympiad 81. 2. b. c. 454, applied to the Athenians to reinstate him in the government which had belonged to his father §. § 12. Anacreon seems to have laid the foundation of his poetical fame in his native town of Teos ; but the most productive period of his poetry was during his residence in Samos. The whole of Anacreon's poetry (says the geographer Strabo, in speaking of the history of Samos) is filled with allusions to Polycrates. His poems, therefore, are not to be considered as the careless outpourings of a mind in the stillness of retirement, but as the work of a person living in the midst of the splendour of the Samian tyrant. Accordingly, his notions of a life of enjoyment are not formed on the Greek model, but on the luxurious man- ners of the Lydians|i, introduced by Polycrates into his court. The beautiful youths, who play a principal part in the genuine poems of Anacreon, are not individuals distinguished from the mass of their con- temporaries by the poet, but young men chosen for their beauty, whom f Anthol. Pal. vii. 25. f'ragm. 52. ed. Gaisford. + The fragment AiW^J T«<rg<T Ifo^o/tut (Schol. Hail. Od. M. 313, fragm. 33. Bergk.) appears to refer to a journey to this country. § Compare Anthol. Pal. vi. 142, with Thucyd. I. 111.
 * In Suidas in v. 'Avuxgiuv, Ts<wj.