Anacreon was born at Teos, a seaport town of Ionia. Who his parents were is uncertain, though it is conjectured from good authority that his family was noble. The time of his birth, according to Barnes, was in the second year of the fifty-fifth Olympiad, about the beginning of the reign of Cyrus, in the year of Rome 194, and A.C. 554. According to this calculation he was about eighteen years of age when Harpagus, the general of Cyrus, came with an army against the confederate cities of the Ionians and Æolians.
The Teians, finding themselves too weak to make a stand against the enemy, chose rather to abandon their country than to give up their liberty; and accordingly withdrew with their families and effects to the city of Abdera in Thrace; where, however, they had not long been settled before the Thracians, jealous of the new-comers, began to give them disturbance.
From Abdera our poet sailed to Samos, hnd took refuge at the court of Polycrates; at that time considered the politest and most flourishing of any in Asia; a distinction which it owed in no small degree to the liberality and personal accomplishments of that prince himself.
We may readily suppose that a person of Anacreon's character would meet with a welcome reception wherever wit and gayety were esteemed;
