At Athens, Anacreon for a time gave free rein to his passions, joining a set of boon companions who basked in the sunshine of royal favor. His voluptuous career was cut short by the assassination of Hipparchus, and he returned to Teos (repeopled during his absence), to be choked by a grape-seed at the advanced age of eighty-five—or, if we are to take the story figuratively, to fall a victim to his irrepressible love of the bottle. A statue of a drunken old man on the Athenian acropolis kept alive in the minds of the people as well the graceful odes of Anacreon as his prevailing weakness. His friend Simonides wrote an epitaph to his memory, in which we catch a glimpse of the exciting whirl of pleasures that made up his existence:— “Bland mother of the grape! all-gladdening vine! Teeming inebriate joy! whose tendrils bloom Crisp-woven in winding trail, now green entwine This pillar’s top, this mount, Anacreon’s tomb. As lover of the feast, the untempered bowl, While the full draught was reeling in his soul, He smote upon the harp, whose melodies Were tuned to girlish loves, till midnight fled; Now, fallen to earth, embower him as he lies, Thy purpling clusters blushing o’er his head: Still be fresh dew upon the branches hung, Like that which breathed from his enchanting tongue.” The name of Anacreon is attached to about sixty odes, but they are all probably from five hundred to a thousand years later than he. Yet, if they are not by his hand, they breathe his spirit. As a sample of these Anacreontics, we give a paraphrase of CUPID AND THE BEE. Young Cupid once a rose caressed, And sportively its leaflets pressed. The witching thing, so fair to view One could not but believe it true, Warmed, on its bosom false, a bee, Which stung the boy-god in his glee. Sobbing, he raised his pinions bright, And flew unto the isle of light, Where, in her beauty, myrtle-crowned, The Paphian goddess sat enthroned. Her Cupid sought, and to her breast His wounded finger, weeping, pressed. “O mother! kiss me,” was his cry— “O mother! save me, or I die; A winged little snake or bee With cruel sting has wounded me!” The blooming goddess in her arms Folded and kissed his budding charms; To her soft bosom pressed her pride, And then with truthful words replied: “If thus a little insect thing Can pain thee with its tiny sting, How languish, think you, those who smart Beneath my Cupid’s cruel dart? How fatal must that poison prove That rankles on the shafts of Love!”