Anacreontis Odaria ad textus Barnesiani fidem emendata

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by Anacreon

Anacreontis Odaria ad textus Barnesiani fidem emendata
AnacreontisOdaria1802.jpg

Title page from Anacreontis Odaria ad textus Barnesiani fidem emendata, George Wythe Collection, Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary.

Author Anacreon
Editor {{{editor}}}
Translator Edward Forster
Published Londini: Sumptibus editoris excudebant Gul. Bulmer et Soc. et prostant apud J. White et G. Miller
Date 1802
Edition {{{edition}}}
Language Greek with Latin notes
Volumes {{{set}}} volume set
Pages {{{pages}}}
Desc. 12mo (20 cm.)
Location [[Shelf {{{shelf}}}]]
  [[Shelf {{{shelf2}}}]]
Bookplate of Peter Isaac, front pastedown.
Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet born around 570 BCE in Teos, an Ionian city on the coast of Asia Minor.[1] He likely moved to Thrace in 545 BCE 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 particular work is a collection of the extant Odes by Anacreon published in Ancient Greek with no notes or commentary.

Illustration, page 63.

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as "Anacreon. Gr. Forster. 12mo." This was one of the books kept by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson later sold a copy of ""Anacreon. Gr. Forster" to the Library of Congress in 1815, but it no longer exists to verify Wythe's prior ownership.[10] The Brown Bibliography[11] and George Wythe's Library[12] on LibraryThing include the 1802 London edition based on E. Millicent Sowerby's inclusion of that edition in Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson. The Wolf Law Library purchased a copy of the same edition.

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

Bound in near contemporary full brown diced calf with gilt rules, decorative elements and lettering. Includes an early gift inscription "W. Haygarth from P. Leigh" on the front flyleaf and the bookplate of Peter Issac on the front pastedown.

View this book in William & Mary's online catalog.

Inscription, front flyleaf.

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, 317.
  10. ↑ E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 4:477 (no.4405).
  11. ↑ Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012) Microsoft Word file. Earlier edition available at: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13433
  12. ↑ LibraryThing, s. v. "Member: George Wythe", accessed October 8, 2013.

External Links

Read this book in Google Books.

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