He was the first, according to
Plato, who edited the poems of Homer, and commanded them to be sung by the
rhapsodists at the celebration of the Panathenaea. From his court, which
was a sort of galaxy of genius, Anacreon could not long be absent.
Hipparchus sent a barge for him; the poet readily embraced the invitation,
and the Muses and the Loves were wafted with him to Athens.
The manner of Anacreon's death was singular. We are told that in the
eighty-fifth year of his age he was choked by a grape-stone; and however
we may smile at their enthusiastic partiality who see in this easy and
characteristic death a peculiar indulgence of Heaven, we cannot help
admiring that his fate should have been so emblematic of his disposition.
Caelius Calcagninus alludes to this catastrophe in the following epitaph
on our poet:--
Those lips, then, hallowed sage, which poured along
A music sweet as any cygnet's song,
The grape hath closed for ever!
Here let the ivy kiss the poet's tomb,
Here let the rose he loved with laurels bloom,
In bands that ne'er shall sever.
But far be thou, oh! far, unholy vine,
By whom the favorite minstrel of the Nine
Lost his sweet vital breath;
Thy God himself now blushes to confess,
Once hallowed vine! he feels he loves thee less,
Since poor Anacreon's death.
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