Anacreon

Anacreon (Greek Ἀνακρέων) was a Greek poet born in the Ionian city of Teos, located on the coast of Asia Minor (present-day Siğacik, in Turkey), around the time of the death of Sappho of Lesbos.

He is believed to have lived between 574 and 485 B.C. C. Escaping the Persian threat, the inhabitants of Ionia emigrated to Thrace, where they founded Abdera. The young poet arrived with them and it is thought that in that city he wrote his first verses. From Abdera he went to Samos, to the court of the tyrant Polycrates, who calls him to be the teacher of his namesake son. After the assassination of Polycrates (522 BC), Anacreon moved to Athens, to the court of the Pisistratids, ruled by Hippias. Hippias sent a special ship to transfer it, according to what Herodotus and pseudo-Aristotle say. After this, he loses track of him, but presumably he died in Athens, where statues of him and others bearing couplets of his authorship have been found.

His works

Her lyric, with a hedonistic, refined and ironic tone, as can be seen in the latest comments found in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, sings of the pleasures of love (both for men and women) and wine, and rejects war and the torment of old age, as well as the cult of Dionysus, barely expanding in his time. Together with Sappho and Alceo he forms the group of the most intimate Greek poets who sang accompanied by the lyre. Crinágoras establishes six of his books, although we have traces of three, a contradiction that can be explained by the various editions over time, since ours would correspond to the Alexandrian editions.

Love for Anacreon is something fundamentally sensual, fleeting and fleeting. His compositions on this subject are extremely brief, as new discoveries have shown. His poems dedicated to a & # 34; young girl & # 34; whom he calls "thracian filly", as well as those that refer to games between the poet and some young man he was in love with (Smerdies, Batilo and Cleóbulo). He has gone down to posterity as the poet of banquets. Among the new fragments, there are many that mention Polycrates, sometimes as if she were a woman and sometimes as if he were a man.

His poems were copied and imitated in later times: they were assigned to him in their entirety although they are not now assumed to be his. This compendium of poems is called Anacreontic and they belong, for the most part, to the Byzantine era.

Anacreon frequently stated, referring to the relationship that the poetess Sappho had with her students, that she had felt a sexual love for them. Such statements were the cause of rumors and over time they spread in such a way that the terms "lesbianism" and "sapphism" were born as a result.

Translations

• Juan Ferraté: Archaic Greeks. Bilingual edition. Seix Barral. Barcelona. 1968.
• Carlos García Gual: Anthology of Greek lyric poetry. VII-IV a.C.. The pocket book, 782. Editorial Alliance. Madrid. 1980.
• Francisco Rodríguez Adrados: Greek archaic. Classical Library, 31. Gredos. Madrid. 1986.
• Rubén Bonifaz Nuño: Anthology of the Greek lyric. Bilingual edition. Our classics, 71. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Mexico. 1988.
• Miguel Castillo Didier: Anacreónticas. Trilingual and quadritext edition. Centro de Estudios Griegos Byzantinos y Neohelénicos. University of Chile. Santiago de Chile. 1999.
• Juan Manuel Rodríguez Tobal: Anacreonte. Poems and fragments. Bilingual edition. Poetry leaves. Pavesas. Segovia. 2000.
• Aurora Luque: The Eros dice. Anthology of Greek erotic poetry. Bilingual edition. Poetry Hyperion, 386. Hyperion. Madrid. 2000.
• Emilio Suárez de la Torre: Anthology of the Greek archaic lyric. Universal letters, 343. Chair. Madrid. 2002.
• Juan Manuel Rodríguez Tobal: The wing and the cigar. Fragments of non-epic Greek archaic poetry. Bilingual edition. Hyperion. Madrid. 2005.
• José Luis Calvo Martínez: Anthology of Greek erotic poetry. Bilingual edition. Universal letters, 414. Chair. Madrid. 2009.
• Mauricio López Noriega: Anacreonte. Poems and fragments. Bilingual edition. Textphilia Editions. Mexico. 2009.
• Janitzio Villamar: "Fragmentos". Editorial Estigia. Mexico, 2013.