Pindar and Anacreon/Anacreon/Biographical Sketch
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
OF
ANACREON.
Of this delightful author, nothing, beyond what we are already acquainted with, can now be known. Antiquity has long since interposed its impenetrable veil; and however brief and unsatisfactory the accounts which have been handed down to us, with them we must still remain satisfied. Succeeding writers, it is true, may seek to impart an air of novelty to their relations, by a new and ingenious arrangement of the scanty materials they possess; still, however, must they relate facts, substantially the same as others, and present to their readers, if not a tedious, yet certainly a "thrice-told tale." For the only authentic incidents relative to this elegant poet we are indebted to contemporary writers, or to those who flourished shortly after him, and from them we glean the few following particulars.
Anacreon was born at Teos, a seaport town of Ionia. Who his parents were is uncertain, though it is conjectured from good authority that his family was noble. The time of his birth, according to Barnes, was in the second year of the fifty-fifth Olympiad, about the beginning of the reign of Cyrus, in the year of Rome 194, and A.C. 554. According to this calculation he was about eighteen years of age when Harpagus, the general of Cyrus, came with an army against the confederate cities of the Ionians and Æolians.
The Teians, finding themselves too weak to make a stand against the enemy, chose rather to abandon their country than to give up their liberty; and accordingly withdrew with their families and effects to the city of Abdera in Thrace; where, however, they had not long been settled before the Thracians, jealous of the new-comers, began to give them disturbance.
From Abdera our poet sailed to Samos, hnd took refuge at the court of Polycrates; at that time considered the politest and most flourishing of any in Asia; a distinction which it owed in no small degree to the liberality and personal accomplishments of that prince himself.
We may readily suppose that a person of Anacreon's character would meet with a welcome reception wherever wit and gayety were esteemed; and accordingly we find that Poly crates not only honoured him with his friendship, but even made him the confidant of his most secret counsels. How long he continued at Samos is uncertain; but it seems probable that he resided there the greater part of that prince's reign. This opinion seems also to be confirmed by Herodotus, who assures us that Anacreon of Teos was with that prince in his chamber when he received a message from Orœtes, governor of Sardis, by whose treachery Polycrates was soon after betrayed and inhumanly crucified. Anacreon, it would seem, had left Samos a short time previous to this remarkable event, and had removed to Athens; having been invited thither by Hipparchus, the eldest son of Pisistratus, one of the most learned and virtuous princes of his time; and who, as Plato assures us, sent a vessel with fifty oars to convey him across the Ægean.
Hipparchus being assassinated in the conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogiton, he returned to his native country Teos; for after the death of Cyrus the Teians had been suffered to reinhabit their country unmolested. Here he remained, as Suidas informs us, till a fresh commotion in the state obliged him once more to fly to Abdera, where he ended his days. There is something so remarkable in the manner of his death, that it seems more in accordance with what might be termed poetical justice than with the sober strain of history, were it not a fact asserted by writers of credit and reputation. He was choked with a grape-stone as he was regaling on some new wine, and expired in the eighty-fifth year of his age.
As to the personal character of this author, he appears to have been a professed despiser of business and the cares of the world, and indeed a lover of pleasure in every shape; though it seems neither just nor generous to form our judgment of him solely from the nature of his writings. The severe and moral Plato condescends to call him the "wise Anacreon;" a title which it is not likely he would have bestowed on him had he possessed no other claim to it than the harmony of his verse or the gayety of his disposition. Independent likewise of this expression of Plato, which must certainly be regarded as no mean evidence in his favour, the grammarian Athenæus distinctly mentions him, as νηφων και αγαθος, sober and honourable.
It now remains to speak of his writings, which were long the delight of other days, and are still read and admired by every scholar of taste and learning in our own. His Odes, the only part of his works which have reached us entire, are written in the Ionic dialect, remarkable for its softness and sweetness. The subjects, though often simple and trifling in themselves, are by the master-hand of the poet rendered susceptible of so many beauties, that they deserved to be sung by the Graces to the harp of Apollo.
His language, free and unrestrained, flows on in an uninterrupted strain of melody, like the streamlet so beautifully described in the twenty-second ode as ῥεουσα πειθους, rolling persuasion; and the reader is at once charmed with the sweet music of his song, and the beauty and simplicity of his descriptions.
As to their moral tendency, a reflection which now necessarily presents itself, it certainly is my decided opinion, that in this poet far less will be found to offend the reader of taste and delicacy than in almost any other ancient author who has written on the same subjects. His language is everywhere pure and elegant; and his sentiments, however much at variance with our own altered ideas and circumstances, are such as might naturally be expected from one who, ignorant of higher and better hopes, mistook the road to happiness through the flowery paths of pleasure.
In short, while we condemn, and with justice, those licentious thoughts and expressions which occur but too frequently in almost every author of antiquity, and which, in a greater or less degree, debase and disfigure their brightest pages, we should Still remember that they are but the erroneous maxims of men who had only the dim light of nature to direct them; and still more thankful ought we to be for those purer precepts of morality which it is our exclusive privilege to enjoy.
From what has been observed respecting the peculiar style of this author's writings, it will easily be supposed that a translation of them into any other language must be attended with many difficulties. To preserve the Ionic elegance of the original, without diverging too far from the text—to imitate its conciseness, without sacrificing its beauties—this indeed is a task much more difficult than might at first be imagined. In fact, I much doubt whether a foreign idiom, confined to the jingling monotony of modern verse, can ever hope to do justice to the sweet warblings of the playful and polished Anacreon. Still more hopeless, I conceive, would be the attempt to render them by a strictly literal version; and in this persuasion, I have endeavoured on every occasion to give what I imagined to be the meaning of my author, without a servile adherence to the letter on the one hand, or a too great license of interpretation on the other. With what success these endeavours have been accomplished, it is the province of others to determine. Perhaps, however, I may here be permitted to observe, that I have never hesitated to sacrifice poetic beauty to purity of language and expression; happy if, by this means, I have rendered accessible to the cabinets of my fair countrywomen a poet whose beauties are many, and whose faults, which were those of his age and country, I have studiously endeavoured to conceal.