Anacreon's date is 563-478 B.C. It must, alas, be admitted that the poems attributed to him are, with the exception of a few fragments, all of them dubious and most of them certainly spurious. He had a great number of imitators down to a much later time, and a considerable number of the pseudo-Anacreontic poems are preserved in an appendix to the Palatine anthology. It may be assumed that some of them reflect a portion of his spirit, and many of them are graceful in conceit and beautiful in form. The specimens here given must be classed upon the productions of his later imitators, although they are inserted in the place where in chronological order the real Anacreon would have followed.
The portraiture of the Greeks was executed with tinted wax, and not with colours rendered fluid by a liquid or oily medium. The various tints and tones of wax were probably laid on with the finger tips or with a spatula.
There was more than one Plato, but the great Plato is evidently referred to in the prefatory poem of Meleager as included among the poets of his anthology.
Captives from Eretria were established in a colony in Persia by Darius after the first Persian war. The colony at Ardericca was, however, hundreds of miles from Ecbatana.
If the epigram on Lais is not attributed to the great Plato by the most competent authorities, the dates of the two famous courtesans who bore the name would not exclude the possibility of his being the author.
Tychon is identified with Priapus.