The Suda says this about him.
While Anacreon himself touched on many subjects in his poetry, his songs of wine, women and song made such an impression that anonymous poets took to writing poems on these subjects in the stereotyped Anacreontic meters. Many of the poems were quoted by various authors, but the collection we know as the Anacreontics today comes from the Palatine Anthology.
It used to be popular to translate the Anacreontics into modern verse, and Bob Blair has collected translations - more paraphrases - into English by Thomas Stanley, Abraham Cowley and Thomas Moore.
Anacreon.
- To Dionysus. Commented (2002 Nov 24).
- Anacreon 395.
Anacreontics. I number the poems according to the 1993 Teubner edition edited by M.L. West. The poems themselves come from Tyler and Smyth. Bergk's numbers are in parentheses.
- 7 (6B). To himself, "the women say 'you're old, Anacreon.'"
- 21 (21B). Drink up!