Anacreontics in the first instance refers to the erotic poems attributed to the Ionian lyric poet Anacreon (6th century BCE), the so-called Anacreontea, and secondly to a writing style that emerged from imitations of the ancient model, adopting its motifs and techniques, but also varying and departing from them.
Only a few fragments of the original inspiration, Anacreon, have been passed down. Greek (Theocritus), Latin (Horace, Catullus) and Neolatin authors including …