Anacreontics

Anacreontics are verses in a metre used by the Greek poet Anacreon in his poems dealing with love and wine. His later Greek imitators (whose surviving poems are known as the Anacreontea) took up the same themes and used the Anacreontic meter. In modern poetry, Anacreontics are short lyrical pieces that keep the Anacreontic subject matter but not the metre.

==The Greek meter== thumb|A section from an ancient metrical treatise concerning the anacreonteus. Above the description the lengths of all but the first syllable can be seen marked out; the final syllable is marked as anceps. Near the beginning of the description it is reported that some call the anacreonteus "Parionic" (παριωνικόν) because of its resemblance to the "class of Ionic meters" (Ἰωνικῶν γένους). (P.Oxy. II 220 col. vii, 1st or 2nd century CE).