The poems of Anacreon
were sung at banquets as late as the time of Aulus Gellius, who tells us
that he heard one of the odes performed at a birthday entertainment.
The singular beauty of our poet's style and the apparent facility,
perhaps, of his metre have attracted, as I have already remarked, a crowd
of imitators. Some of these have succeeded with wonderful felicity, as may
be discerned in the few odes which are attributed to writers of a later
period. But none of his emulators have been half so dangerous to his fame
as those Greek ecclesiastics of the early ages, who, being conscious of
their own inferiority to their great prototypes, determined on removing
all possibility of comparison, and, under a semblance of moral zeal,
deprived the world of some of the most exquisite treasures of ancient
times. The works of Sappho and Alcaeus were among those flowers of Grecian
literature which thus fell beneath the rude hand of ecclesiastical
presumption. It is true they pretended that this sacrifice of genius was
hallowed by the interests of religion, but I have already assigned the
most probable motive; and if Gregorius Nazianzenus had not written
Anacreontics, we might now perhaps have the works of the Teian
unmutilated, and be empowered to say exultingly with Horace,
_Nec si quid olim lusit Anacreon
delevit aetas_.
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