Anakreon

A lyric poet from the 6th century BC, originating from Teos in Asia Minor. He was included in the Canon of the Nine Lyric Poets of Greece. At a young age, he was forced to leave his homeland due to the Persian threat and settled in Abdera, Thrace, along with many of his compatriots. Later, living at the courts of various rulers (Polycrates in Samos, Hipparchus in Athens), he delicately and sensitively sang of love, wine, and the joy of life. "The much-praised sympotic songs of Anacreon," notes Paul Kroh, "avoid any excess and appreciate the company of cultivated people; nevertheless, even in antiquity, Anacreon was seen as the 'drunken poet,' gaining the reputation of a thoughtless reveler or even a classic representative of eroticism. The genuine image of the poet was also tarnished early on by some partly inadequate, in any case, one-sided imitations, the so-called Anacreontea; however, this false image exerted a strong influence on world literature." Anacreontea, precisely, are the two epigrams attributed to him in the eleventh book of the "Palatine Anthology."