Archilochus
Overview
 
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.
Quotations

πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ, ἐχῖνος δ'ἓν μέγα

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

ὦ Ζεῦ͵ πάτερ Ζεῦ͵ σὸν μὲν οὐρανοῦ κράτος͵ σὺ δ΄ ἔργ΄ ἐπ΄ ἀνθρώπων ὁρᾶις λεωργὰ καὶ θεμιστά͵ σοὶ δὲ θηρίων ὕβρις τε καὶ δίκη μέλει.

Oh Zeus, father Zeus, Yours is the Kingdom of Heaven, and you watch men's deeds, the crafty and the right, and You are who cares for beasts' transgression and justice.

These golden mattersOf Gyges of Lydia|Gyges and his treasuriesAre no concern of mine.Jealousy has no power over me,Nor do I envy a god his work,And I do not burn to rule.Such things have noFascination for my eyes.

Variant: The affairs of gold-laden Gyges do not interest me zealousy of the gods has never seized me nor anger at their deeds. But I have no love for great tyranny for its deeds are very far from my eyes. :A fragment as translated by Guy Davenport|Guy Davenport

Be bold! That's one wayOf getting through life.So I turn upon herAnd point out that,Faced with the wickednessOf things, she does not shiver.

I know how to love thoseWho love me, how to hate.

You whom the soldiers beat,You who are all but dead,How the gods love youAnd I, alone in the dark,I was promised the light.

 
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