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He spent part of his life at Samos, under the patronage of Polycrates; and after the death of this despot he went to Athens at the invitation of Hipparchus. The universal tradition of antiquity represents Anacreon as a consummate voluptuary; and his poems prove the truth of the tradition. His death was worthy of his life, if we may believe the account that he was choked by a grape-stone.
For I pass over the peculiar nature of all things which are produced from the earth; which generates such great trunks and branches from so small a grain of the fig or from the grape-stone, or from the minutest seeds of other fruits and roots; shoots, plants, twigs, quicksets, layers, do not these produce the effect of delighting any one even to admiration?
Notwithstanding all this, poor Aeschylus was killed by the fall of the shell of a tortoise, which falling from betwixt the claws of an eagle high in the air, just on his head, dashed out his brains. Neither ought you to wonder at the death of another poet, I mean old jolly Anacreon, who was choked with a grape-stone.
QUAE ... PROCREET: 'able to generate'. TANTULO: strictly elliptic, implying quantulum re vera est. In such uses tantus and tantulus differ slightly from magnus and parvus; they are more emphatic. ACINI VINACEO: 'a grape-stone'. MINUTISSIMIS: used here for minimis.
For I say nothing here of the natural force which all things propagated from the earth possess the earth which from that tiny grain in a fig, or the grape-stone in a grape, or the most minute seeds of the other cereals and plants, produces such huge trunks and boughs. Mallet-shoots, slips, cuttings, quicksets, layers are they not enough to fill anyone with delight and astonishment?
Qui fortiter emungit, elicit sanguinem; and where the wine-press is hard wrought, it yields a harsh wine, that tastes of the grape-stone. Judges must beware of hard constructions, and strained inferences; for there is no worse torture, than the torture of laws.
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