Archilochus

Archilochus, or, Archilochos (Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

: ) (c.

Circa

Circa , usually abbreviated c. or ca. , means "approximately" in the English language, usually referring to a date...

 680 BC – c. 645 BC)While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby

Felix Jacoby

Felix Jacoby was a German classicist and philologist. He is best known among classicists for his highly important work Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, a collection of text fragments of ancient Greek historians...

, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 (1941) 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox

Robin Lane Fox

Robin Lane Fox is an English historian, currently a Fellow of New College, Oxford and University of Oxford Reader in Ancient History.-Life:Lane Fox was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford....

, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer (London: Allen Lane, 2008, ISBN 978-0713999808), p. 388, dates him c. 740-680. is a poet who lived on the island of Paros

Paros

Paros is an island of Greece in the central Aegean Sea. One of the Cyclades island group, it lies to the west of Naxos, from which it is separated by a channel about wide. It lies approximately south-east of Piraeus. The Municipality of Paros includes numerous uninhabited offshore islets...

 in the Archaic period in Greece

Archaic period in Greece

The Archaic period in Greece was a period of ancient Greek history that followed the Greek Dark Ages. This period saw the rise of the polis and the founding of colonies, as well as the first inklings of classical philosophy, theatre in the form of tragedies performed during Dionysia, and written...

 whose innovative poetry, in various meters, was the first to focus upon personal experiences and emotions. Alexandrian scholars included him, along with Semonides and Hipponax

Hipponax

Hipponax of Ephesus and later Clazomenae was an Ancient Greek iambic poet who composed verses depicting the vulgar side of life in Ionian society in the sixth century BC...

, in their canon of iambic poets

Iambus (genre)

Iambus was a genre of ancient Greek poetry that included but was not restricted to the iambic meter and whose origins modern scholars have traced to the cults of Demeter and Dionysus. The genre featured insulting and obscene language...

, and ancient commentators also numbered him with Tyrtaeus

Tyrtaeus

Tyrtaeus was a Greek poet who composed verses in Sparta around the time of the Second Messenian War, the date of which isn't clearly establishedsometime in the latter part of the seventh century BC...

 and Callinus

Callinus

Callinus was a poet who lived in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus in Asia Minor in the mid-7th century BC. He is the earliest known Greek elegiac poet. Very little is known about his life....

 as one of the possible inventors of elegy

Elegiac couplet

The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later...

. Modern critics however generally characterize him simply as a lyric poet

Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...

. Although his work only survives in fragments, he was revered by the ancient Greeks as one of their most brilliant authors, and mentioned in the same breath as Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

 and Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

,. He was also censured by them as the archetypal poet of blamehis invective was said to have driven his former fiancee and her father to suicide. He presented himself as a man of few illusions, either in love or war, such as in the following elegy, where discretion is taken to be the better part of valour:

One of the tribesmen in Thrace now delights in the shield I discarded

Unwillingly near a bush, for it was perfectly good,

But at least I got myself safely out. Why should I care for that shield?

Let it go. Some other time I'll find another no worse.

Archilochus was much imitated, by Latin as well as Greek poets, and three other distinguished poets claimed to have also thrown away their shieldsAlcaeus, Anacreon

Anacreon

Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets.- Life :...

 and Horace

Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...

.

The historical sources

Information about the life of Archilochus derives from his surviving work, the testimony of other authors, and inscriptions upon monuments. The vivid language and intimate details of the poems suggest that they are autobiographical but it is known, on the authority of Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, that Archilochus sometimes role-playedand the philosopher quotes two fragments as examples of an author speaking in somebody else's voice. In one, Archilochus is said to be speaking in the voice of an unnamed father, commenting on a recent eclipse of the sun, and in the other, as a carpenter named Charon, expressing his indifference to the wealth of Gyges

Gyges of Lydia

Gyges was the founder of the third or Mermnad dynasty of Lydian kings and reigned from 716 BC to 678 BC . He was succeeded by his son Ardys II.-Allegorical accounts of Gyges' rise to power:...

, the king of Lydia

Lydia

Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....

.. One modern scholar has suggested that imaginary characters and situations might have been a feature of the "iambus" poetic tradition within which Archilochus composed.

If we assume that Charon and the unnamed father were speaking about events that Archilochus had experienced himself, they give us some clues about the chronology of his life. Gyges reigned 687 BC652 BC, and the date of the eclipse must have been either 6 April 648 BC or 27 June 660 BC (another date, 14 March 711 BC, is generally considered too early to be relevant to the poet's life). The dates are consistent with other evidence of the poet's chronology and reported history, such as the discovery at Thasos

Thasos

Thasos or Thassos is a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea, close to the coast of Thrace and the plain of the river Nestos but geographically part of Macedonia. It is the northernmost Greek island, and 12th largest by area...

 of a cenotaph, dated around the end of the seventh century, dedicated to a friend who is named in several fragments: Glaucus, son of Leptines. Although the chronology for Archilochus is uncertain, modern scholars generally settle for the dates circa 680 BC640 BC.

Sometime in the third century BC a sanctuary to Archilochus was established on his home island of Paros, where his admirers could sacrifice to him, and Apollo, Dionysus, and the Muses. Inscriptions found on orthostats from the sanctuary include quoted verses and historical references. In one, we are told that his father Telesicles once sent Archilochus to fetch a cow from the fields, but that he chanced to meet a group of women who vanished with the animal, leaving him a lyre in its placethey were the Muses and they had selected him as a protégé. According to the same inscription, this omen was later confirmed by the oracle at Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...

. Not all the inscriptions are so fanciful. Some are records by a local historian, set out in chronological order according to custom, under the names of archons. Unfortunately, these are very fragmentary.

Snippets of biographical information are provided by the ancient authors Tatian

Tatian

Tatian the Assyrian was an Assyrian early Christian writer and theologian of the 2nd century.Tatian's most influential work is the Diatessaron, a Biblical paraphrase, or "harmony", of the four gospels that became the standard text of the four gospels in the Syriac-speaking churches until the...

, Proclus

Proclus

Proclus Lycaeus , called "The Successor" or "Diadochos" , was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major Classical philosophers . He set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism...

, Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria

Titus Flavius Clemens , known as Clement of Alexandria , was a Christian theologian and the head of the noted Catechetical School of Alexandria. Clement is best remembered as the teacher of Origen...

, Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

, Aelian

Aelian

Aelian or Aelianus may refer to:* Aelianus Tacticus, Greek military writer of the 2nd century, who lived in Rome* Casperius Aelianus, Praetorian Prefect, executed by Trajan...

, Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

, Galen

Galen

Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus , better known as Galen of Pergamon , was a prominent Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher...

, Dio Chrysostom

Dio Chrysostom

Dio Chrysostom , Dion of Prusa or Dio Cocceianus was a Greek orator, writer, philosopher and historian of the Roman Empire in the 1st century. Eighty of his Discourses are extant, as well as a few Letters and a funny mock essay In Praise of Hair, as well as a few other fragments...

, Aelius Aristides

Aelius Aristides

Aelius Aristides was a popular Greek orator , who lived during the Roman Empire. He is considered to be a prime example of the Second Sophistic, a group of showpiece orators who flourished from the reign of Nero until ca. 230 AD. His surname was Theodorus...

 and by several anonymous authors in the Palatine Anthology

Palatine Anthology

The Palatine Anthology is the collection of Greek poems and epigrams discovered in 1606 in the Palating Library in Heidelberg. It is based on the lost collection of Constantine Cephalas of the 10th century, which has been composed using older anthologies. It contains material from the 7th century...

. See and other poets below for the testimony of some famous poets.

Scholarship and the biographical tradition

According to tradition, his grandfather (or possibly great-grandfather) Tellis helped to establish the cult of Demeter

Demeter

In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons . Her common surnames are Sito as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society...

 on Thasos

Thasos

Thasos or Thassos is a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea, close to the coast of Thrace and the plain of the river Nestos but geographically part of Macedonia. It is the northernmost Greek island, and 12th largest by area...

 near the end of the eighth century, a mission depicted in a celebrated painting at Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...

 by the Thasian Polygnotus

Polygnotus

Polygnotus was an ancient Greek painter from the middle of the 5th century BC, son and pupil of Aglaophon. He was a native of Thasos, but was adopted by the Athenians, and admitted to their citizenship....

. The painting, as described by Pausanias, featured Tellis in Hades

Hades

Hades , Hadēs, originally , Haidēs or , Aidēs , meaning "the unseen") was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. The genitive , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative came to designate the abode of the dead.In Greek mythology, Hades...

, sharing Charon

Charon (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon is the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on...

's boat with the priestess of Demeter."Tellis appears to be in his late teens; Cleoboea is still a girl and she has on her knees a chest of the sort that they are accustomed to make for Demeter. With regard to Tellis I heard only that he was the grandfather of Archilochus and they say that Cleoboea was the first to introduce the rites of Demeter to Thasos from Paros."Pausanias 10.28.3, translated by Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb (1999) page 75 The poet's father, Telesicles, founded the Parian colony in Thasos. The names 'Tellis' and 'Telesicles' have religious connotations and some infer from this that the poet was born into a priestly family devoted to Demeter. Inscriptions in the Archilocheion identify Archilochus as a key figure in the Parian cult of Dionysus

Dionysus

Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...

. There is no evidence for reports that his mother was a slave named Enipo and that he left Paros to become a mercenary in order to to escape poverty. The slave claim probably derives from a misreading of some of his verses and archaeology indicates that life on Paros, which he associated with "figs and seafaring", was not impoverished; and although he frequently refers to the rough life of a soldier, warfare was part of being an aristocrat in the archaic period and there is no indication that he fought for pay.The name 'Enipo' has connotations of abuse (enipai), which is curiously apt for the mother of a famous iambographer see M.L.West, Studies in Early greek Elegy and Iambus, Berlin and New York (1974), page 28

The life of Archilochus was marked by conflicts. Ancient tradition identifies a Parian called Lycambes, together with his daughters, as the main target of his invective. Lycambes is said to have betrothed his daughter Neobule to Archilochus; when he reneged on the agreement, the poet retaliated with such abusive eloquence and scurrilous accusations that Lycambes, Neobule, and one or both of his other daughters, committed suicide. The story became a popular theme with later Alexandrian versifiers, who played upon its poignancy at the expense of Archilochus.Elegies include the following by Dioscorides, in which the victims are imagined to speak from the grave: "We here, the daughters of Lycambes who gained a hateful reputation, swear by the reverence in which this tomb of the dead is held that we did not shame our virginity or our parents or Paros, pre-eminent among holy islands, but Archilochus spewed forth frightful reproach and a hateful report against our family. We swear by the gods and spirits that we did not set eyes on Archilochus either in the streets or in Hera's great precinct. If we had been lustful and wicked, he would have not wanted to beget legitimate children from us."Palatine Anthology 7.351, cited and translated by Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb (1999) page 49 Some scholars believe that Lycambes and his daughters existed only as "stock characters in a traditional entertainment". Others claim that Lycambes was as an oath-breaker and the invective was a social obligation consistent with the practice of 'iambos'.

The inscriptions in the Archilocheion imply that the poet had a role in the introduction of the cult of Dionysus to Parosand because his songs were condemned as "too iambic" (possibly the issue was related to phallic worship) they were punished by the gods (possibly with impotence). The citizens were instructed by the oracle of Apollo to atone for their error and rid themselves of their suffering by honouring the poet. His hero cult lasted on Paros

Paros

Paros is an island of Greece in the central Aegean Sea. One of the Cyclades island group, it lies to the west of Naxos, from which it is separated by a channel about wide. It lies approximately south-east of Piraeus. The Municipality of Paros includes numerous uninhabited offshore islets...

 over 800 years.

Conflict found its ultimate expression in war. He joined the Parian colony on Thasos and battled the indigenous Thracians, claiming in his poetry to be a soldier fighting for a country he doesn't love ("Thasos, thrice miserable city") on behalf of a people he scorns ("The woes [dregs] of all the Greeks have come together in Thasos"),, although valuing his closest comrades and his stalwart, if unattractive, commander."I have no liking for a general who is tall, walks with a swaggering gait, takes pride in his curls and is partly shaven. Let mine be one who is short, has a bent look about the shins, stands firmly on his feet and is full of courage."Fragment 114, cited and translated by Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb (1999) page 153 Later he returned to Paros and joined the fight against the neighbouring island of Naxos

Naxos (island)

Naxos is a Greek island, the largest island in the Cyclades island group in the Aegean. It was the centre of archaic Cycladic culture....

. A Naxian warrior named Calondas won notoriety as the man that killed him. The fate of this Naxian interested later authors such as Plutarch and Dio Chrysostom, since he was punished by exclusion from the temple of Apollo at Delphi, where he had gone to consult the oracle and was banished with the words: "You killed the servant of the Muses; depart from the temple."

The poet's character

Archilochus is both a warrior and a poet:

I am the servant of Lord Enyalios [Ares, god of war],

and skilled in the lovely gift of the Muses.

It is claimed that although Homer supplied Archilochus with a poetic model, in Homer's day it was unthinkable for a poet to be also a warrior. Archilochus seems to be deliberately breaking the traditional mould:

Ancient authors and scholars sometimes react angrily to his poetry and his biographical tradition, condemning "fault-finding Archilochus" for "fattening himself on harsh words of hatred" (see Pindar's comment in and other poets below) and for his "unseemly and lewd utterances directed towards women", whereby he made "a spectacle of himself" (Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

 de curiositate 10.520a-b), being "...a noble poet in other respects if one were to take away his foul mouth and slanderous speech and wash them away like a stain" (Suda

Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

). According to Valerius Maximus

Valerius Maximus

Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He worked during the reign of Tiberius .-Biography:...

, the Sparta

Sparta

Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

ns banished the works of Archilochus from their state for the sake of their children "...lest it harm their morals more than it benefited their talents." Yet some ancient scholars interpreted his motives more sympathetically:

Poetry

Archilochus's merits as a poet were famously summarized by the Quintilian

Quintilian

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...

:
In fact the surviving fragments of his work (which mostly come from Egyptian papyri) belie this "defect of subject matter". Ancient commentators generally focused on his lampoons, and on the virulence of his invective as in the comments below (see and other poets), yet his poetic interests were actually wide-ranging. Alexandrian scholars collected the works of the other two major iambographers, Semonides and Hipponax, in just two books each, each cited by number, but Archilochus was edited and cited not by book number but by poetic terms such as 'elegy', 'trimeters', 'tetrameters' and 'epodes'. Moreover, even those terms fail to indicate his full range:

One convenient way to classify the poems is to divide them between elegy and iambus elegy aimed at some degree of decorum, since it employed the stately hexameter of epic, whereas iambus appears to have been the ancient term for any informal kind of verse designed to entertain (it may have included the iambic meter but was not confined to it). Hence the accusation that he was "too iambic" (see Biography) referred not to his choice of meter but his informal subject matter and tone. Elegy was accompanied by the aulos

Aulos

An aulos or tibia was an ancient Greek wind instrument, depicted often in art and also attested by archaeology.An aulete was the musician who performed on an aulos...

 or pipe, whereas the performance of iambus varied, from recitation or chant in iambic trimeter and trochaic tetrameter, to singing of epodes accompanied by some musical instrument (which one isn't known) Archilochus was not included in the canonic list of nine lyric poets

Nine lyric poets

The nine lyric poets were a canon of archaic Greek composers esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria as worthy of critical study.They were:*Alcman of Sparta...

 compiled by Hellenistic scholarshis range exceeded their narrow criteria for lyric ('lyric' meant verse accompanied by the lyre

Lyre

The lyre is a stringed musical instrument known for its use in Greek classical antiquity and later. The word comes from the Greek "λύρα" and the earliest reference to the word is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists", written in Linear B syllabic script...

). He did compose some lyrics, but only fragments survive today. They include however one of the most famous of all lyric utterances, a hymn to Heracles

Heracles

Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...

 with which victors were hailed at the Olympic Games

Olympic Games

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

, featuring a refrain in which the first word imitates the sound of the lyre.
See comment by Theocritus below.

The earliest meter in extant Greek poetry was the epic

Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

 hexameter

Hexameter

Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...

 of Homer. Homer however did not create the epic hexameter, and there is evidence that other meters also predate his work (see for example the Iliad 1.472-74; 16.182-83; 18.493). Thus, though ancient scholars credited Archilochus with the invention of elegy and iambic poetry, he probably built on a "flourishing tradition of popular song". His innovations do however seem to have turned a popular tradition into an important literary medium.

Style

Like other archaic Greek poets, Archilochus relied heavily on Homer's language, particularly when using the same meter, dactylic hexameter

Dactylic hexameter

Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin, and was consequently considered to be the Grand Style of classical poetry...

 (as for example in elegy

Elegy

In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.-History:The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs...

), but even in other meters the debt is apparentin the verse below, for example, his address to his embattled soul or spirit, , has Homeric connotations (Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

20.18 ff, Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

22.98-99 and 22.122). The meter in this case is trochaic tetrameter catalectic

Catalectic

A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line....

 (four pairs of trochees with the final syllable omitted), a form later favoured by Athenian dramatists because of its running character, expressing aggression and emotional intensity. The comic poet Aristophanes

Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...

, for instance, employed it for the arrival on stage of an enraged chorus in The Knights

The Knights

The Knights was the fourth play written by Aristophanes, the master of an ancient form of drama known as Old Comedy. The play is a satire on the social and political life of classical Athens during the Peloponnesian War and in this respect it is typical of all the dramatist's early plays...

, but Archilochus uses it here to communicate the need for emotional moderation. His use of the meter here isn't intentionally ironic since he didn't share the tidy functionalism of later theorists, for whom different meters and verse-forms were endowed with distinctive characters suited to different taskshis use of meter is "neutral in respect of ethos". The following verse is also indicative of the fragmentary nature of Archilochus's extant work: lines 2 and 3 are probably corrupted and modern scholars have tried to emend them in various ways, none satisfactory, though the general meaning is clear.

My Soul, my Soul, all disturbed by sorrows inconsolable,

Bear up, hold out, meet front-on the many foes that rush on you

Now from this side and now that, enduring all such strife up close,

Never wavering; and should you win, don't openly exult,

Nor, defeated, throw yourself lamenting in a heap at home,

But delight in things that are delightful and, in hard times, grieve

Not too muchappreciate the rhythm that controls men's lives.

Pindar

"But I must shun the deep bite of slander. For at a far remove I have seen fault-finding Archilochus many times in his helplessness fattening himself on the harsh words of hate."Pythian 2.52-56

Callimachus

"Archilochus drew in the dog's pungent bile and the wasp's sharp sting, and he has his mouth's venom from both"fragment 380 Pf.

Theocritus

"Stop and look upon Archilochus, the iambic poet of old, whose vast fame has spread from the sun's rising to its setting. In truth the Muses and Delian Apollo loved him, so musical was he and skilful in composing verses and singing them to the lyre."Epigrams

Horace

"I was the first to show Latium the iambics of Paros, following the rhythms and spirit of Archilochus, but not the subject matter and words that assailed Lycambes"Epistles 1.19.23-25

"Beware, beware, for with the utmost ferocity I lift my ready horns against evildoers, just like the scorned son-in-law of treacherous Lycambes..."Epodes 6.11-13

Ovid

"Afterwards, if you continue, my unrestrained iambics will launch against you shafts tinged with the blood of Lycambes"Ibis 53-54

Martial

"What does it avail me when certain people wish to pass off as mine whatever shafts drip with the blood of Lycambes...?"Epigrams 7.12.5-6

Recent discoveries

Thirty previously unknown lines by Archilochus, in the elegiac

Elegiac

Elegiac refers either to those compositions that are like elegies or to a specific poetic meter used in Classical elegies. The Classical elegiac meter has two lines, making it a couplet: a line of dactylic hexameter, followed by a line of dactylic pentameter...

 meter, describing events leading up to the Trojan War

Trojan War

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...

, in which Achaeans battled Telephus

Telephus

A Greek mythological figure, Telephus or Telephos Telephus was one of the Heraclidae, the sons of Heracles, who were venerated as founders of cities...

 king of Mysia

Mysia

Mysia was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor or Anatolia . It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. It was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lydia on the south, Aeolis on the southwest, Troad on the west and by the Propontis on the north...

, have recently been identified among the Oxyrhynchus papyri

Oxyrhynchus Papyri

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a very numerous group of manuscripts discovered by archaeologists including Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt . The manuscripts date from the 1st to the 6th century AD. They include thousands of Greek and...

and published in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume LXIX (Graeco-Roman Memoirs 89).

Quotes

• "Keep some measure in the joy you take in luck, and the degree you give way to sorrow.".
• "I know the art of loving him that loves me, and hating my hater".
• "The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog only one. One good one."
• "Thasos is like the spine of a donkey, wreathed in unkempt forest"

External links

• Introduction to Archilochos and translation of A's longest fragment by Guy Davenport
• Web Resources on Archilochos
• The Poetry of Archilochos
• Archilochos fragments in Greek
• Archilochus Bilingual Anthology (in Greek and English, side by side)
• Zweisprachige Textauswahl zu den griechischen Lyrikern mit zusätzlichen Hilfen
• SORGLL: Archilochos 67; read by Stephen Daitz