Difference between revisions of "Odes of Anacreon"

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by Anacreon

Odes of Anacreon
Title page from Odes of Anacreon, George Wythe Collection, Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary.
Author	Anacreon
Editor	{{{editor}}}
Translator	Thomas Moore
Published	Philadelphia: Printed and published by Hugh Maxwell, opposite Christ-church
Date	1804
Edition	{{{edition}}}
Language	English
Volumes	{{{set}}} volume set
Pages	xvi, [17]-301
Desc.	(20 cm.)
Location	[[Shelf {{{shelf}}}]]
	[[Shelf {{{shelf2}}}]]

Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet born around 570BCE in Teos, an Ionian city on the coast of Asia Minor. ^[1] He likely moved to Thrace in 545BCE with others from his city when it was attacked by Persians. Following that, he moved to Samos and then to Athens and possibly again to Thessaly, seeking a safe place to write his poems as his patrons kept being murdered (Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, and Hipparchus, brother of Athenian tyrant Hippias). ^[2] It is unknown where he died ^[3], though he made it to the unusually advanced age of 85 when he died in 485 BCE ^[4]

Little of Anacreon’s actual works survives, but what does is focused almost solely on wine, love (homosexual and heterosexual) and the overall pleasures of the legendary Roman symposium ^[5] Anacreon utilized language to present clear images of love and to highlight the significant aspects of his writing through various techniques including self-deprecation and irony. ^[6] The collection of miscellaneous Greek poems from the Hellenistic Age and beyond known as the Anacreontea ^[7] was “mistakenly labeled” with Anacreon’s name, a fact known and denied through antiquity and the Renaissance, but once the unequivocal truth of the false origin of these poems was known, their previous fame and praise was cast aside in exchange for derision ^[8] Unfortunately, despite the later appreciation for the true Anacreon’s poems, his works were not appreciated contemporaneously or throughout Europe during the Renaissance as the false Anacreontea ^[9] This work is a collection of the Odes of Anacreon, translated into English by Thomas Moore and also annotated to provide clarity and additional classical references. The index lists the translated titles of the 79 odes that are included, as well as indicating the presence of fragments.

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

Stamped "Sam Hopkins" and inscribed "Hopkins, 1820."

External Links

Google Books

References

1. ↑ " Ana'creon” in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, ed. by M.C. Howatson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
2. ↑ Ibid.
3. ↑ Ibid
4. ↑ Marty Roth, “’Anacreon’ and Drink Poetry; or, the Art of Feeling Very Very Good,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 42, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 314.
5. ↑ "Anacreon" in Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World, ed. by John Roberts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).]
6. ↑ Ibid.
7. ↑ Ibid.
8. ↑ Roth, “’Anacreon’ and Drink Poetry; or, the Art of Feeling Very Very Good,” 316-17.
9. ↑ Ibid at 317.