Anacreon

(b Teos, c570 bce; d 490 or 485 bce). Greek lyric poet. An Ionian by birth and upbringing, he spent his professional life in the service of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, and later at Athens under the patronage of Peisistratus's son Hipparchus. His poetry reflects the gay, sophisticated atmosphere of the courts where he was musical arbiter; underlying it is the cultural heritage of his native Ionia, especially the distinctive tradition of lighthearted monody.

Although the writings of Anacreon include elegiac and iambic poetry as well as lyric, extant musical references occur only in the lyrics. He speaks of ‘the lovely pēktis’ and ‘the 20-string magadis’ of his homeland (Edmonds, frag.18.2–3; 19.1–2); he also mentions auloi with only three finger-holes instead of the usual six (frag.22). Critias, an early 5th-century writer (in Athenaeus, xiii, 600d), portrayed the poet himself as an antagonist of the aulos and fond of the Barbitos. Anacreon is the first Greek musician of whom credible personal portraits are known, two vase-paintings that come from his own time. Both show him holding the barbitos (see Alcaeus), and a late source (Athenaeus, iv, 175e) even credits him with having invented it. Many poems were written in imitation of his style until five centuries or more after his death; these had a literary and musical influence of their own.

WRITINGS

J.M. Edmonds, ed. and trans.: Lyra graeca, ii (London and Cambidge, MA, 1924, 2/1928/R)

D.L. Page, ed.: Poetae melici graeci (Oxford, 1962)

D.L. Page, ed.: Lyrica graeca selecta (Oxford, 1968/R), 147ff

M.L. West, ed.: Iambi et elegi graeci, ii (Oxford, 1972), 30–31

D.A. Campbell, ed. and trans.: Greek Lyric, ii (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1988), 22–247

BIBLIOGRAPHY

U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff: Sappho und Simonides (Berlin, 1913/R), 105–6, 114–16

C.M. Bowra: Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides (Oxford, 1936, 2/1961), 268–307

G.M. Kirkwood: Early Greek Monody: the History of a Poetic Type (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1974), 150–77

M. Maas and J.M. Snyder: Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece (New Haven, CT, 1989), 118–20

W.D. Anderson: Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 79–81

WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN