According to others, before returning to Teos, he accompanied Simonides to the court of Echecrates, a Thessalian dynast of the house of the Aleuadae. Lucian mentions Anacreon amongst his instances of the longevity of eminent men, as having completed eighty-five years. If an anecdote given by Pliny the Elder[5] is correct, he was choked by a grape-stone, but the story has an air of mythical adaptation to the poet's habits, which makes it more likely to be apocryphal.[2]