Archilochus

“ Next in point of time comes Archilochus of Pa'ros, a satirist who flourished between 714 and 676 B.C. He is generally considered to be the first Greek poet who wrote in the Iambic measure; but there are evidences that this measure existed before his time. This poet was betrothed to the daughter of a noble of Paros; but the father, probably tempted by the alluring offers of a richer suitor, forbade the nuptials. Archilochus thereupon composed so bitter a lampoon upon the family that the daughters of the nobleman are said to have hanged themselves. ”

“ How and when it was evacuated by them, we do not know; but the poet Archilochus [51] formed one of a body of Parian colonists who planted themselves on it in the seventh century B. C., and carried on war, not always successful, against the Thracian tribe called Saians: on one occasion, Archilochus found himself compelled to throw away his shield. By their mines and their possessions on the mainland (which contained even richer mines, at Skaptê Hylê, and elsewhere, than those in the island) , the Thasian Greeks rose to considerable power and population. ”

“ Though almerciless assailant of individuals, Archilochus was also a distinguished statesman, naturally for the most part in opposition, and his writings seem to have fulfilled many of the functions of a newspaper press. Their merit is attested by Quintilian; and Gorgias's comparison of them with Plato's persiflage of the Sophists proves that their virulence must have been tempered by grace and refinement. Archilochus also gave satiric poetry its accepted form by the invention of the iambic trimeter, slightly modified into the scazonic meter by his successors. ”

“ Archilochus, of the island Paros, was the first poet to use the iambic metre, which afterwards played an important part in Greek verse. His birth, at about 700 B. C., was, according to the story, foretold by the Delphic oracle; and this same oracle after his death cursed the soldier who had killed him in battle, for "slaying the servant of the Muses." ”

“ But that these pictures, like carica- tures from the hand of a master, had a striking truth, may be inferred from the impression which Archilochus"' iambics produced, both upon contem- poraries and posterity. Mere calumnies could never have driven the daughters of Lycambes to hang themselves, — if, indeed, this story is to be believed, and is not a gross exaggeration. But we have no need of it ; the universal admiration which was awarded to Archilochus' iambics proves the existence of a foundation of truth ”

“ At any rate, he for one ran away, abandoning his shield—to Greek sentiment an unforgivable offence. Who tells us this? Archilochus himself, adding impudently that he doesn’t care; he can easily get another shield, and meantime his skin is whole. The ancient world never quite got over the scandal of this avowal. Archilochus aggravated it by a poem to a friend in which he remarks that a man who pays much attention to charges of cowardice won’t have very many pleasures. But cowards don’t become soldiers, and don’t write humorous accounts of their misbehaviour. ”

“ The emperor Hadrian judged that the Muses had shown a special mark of favour to Homer in leading Archilochus into a different department of poetry. {Epig. 5.) Other testimonies are collected by Liebel (p. 43) .
The Iambics of Archilochus expressed the strongest feelings in the most unmeasured lan- guage. The licence of Ionian democracy and the bitterness of a disappointed man were united with the highest degree of poetical power to give them force and point. ”

“ Archilŏchus, a poet of Paros; who wrote elegies, satires, odes, and epigrams, and was the first who introduced iambics in his verses. He had courted Neobule the daughter of Lycambes, and had received promises of marriage; but the father gave her to another superior to the poet in rank and fortune; upon which Archilochus wrote such a bitter satire, that Lycambes hanged himself in a fit of despair. The Spartans condemned his verses on account of their indelicacy, and banished him from their city as a petulant and dangerous citizen. He flourished 685 B.C., and it is said that he was assassinated. ”

“ The folly of men and the falsity of women seem to have been the themes of the animal stories which Archilochus, like Æsop, composed. Woman is the fox; man is now the eagle, now the ape; but the fragments are too short for a certain judgment. What remains, indeed, of Archilochus is always tantalising in its incompleteness. ”

“ There does not appear to be any good reason why Archilochus should have had so bad a time of it except the reason of temperament. One great thing I do know, quoth he, how to pay back in bitter27 kind the man who wrongs me. He certainly did know that, but the knowledge was not going to make him popular. He never could get on with people. He hated Paros, where, one would have thought, his father’s son had a fair chance of happiness. Damn Paros—and those figs—and a life at sea. Later he accompanied a colony, led by his father, to the island of Thasos off the Thracian coast ”

“ Polygnotus has plainly followed the account of Archilochus, but I do not know whether Archilochus borrowed from others the story of the stone or whether it was an invention of his that he introduced into his poem. So great is the number of the figures and so many are their beauties, in this painting of the Thasian artist.
10.32.1 Adjoining the sacred enclosure is a theater worth seeing, and on coming up from the enclosure...and here is an image of Dionysus, dedicated by the Cnidians. The stadium is on the highest part of their city. ”

“ Now Chamæleon, in his essay on Stesichorus, says that not only the poems of Homer, but those also of Hesiod and Archilochus, and also of Mimnermus and Phocylides, were often recited to the accompaniment of music; and Clearchus, in the first book of his treatise on Pictures, says—"Simonides of Zacynthus used to sit in the theatres on a lofty chair reciting the verses of Archilochus." ”

“ Archilochus and Kallinus both appear to fall about the middle of the seventh century B. C., and it is with them that the innovations in Grecian poetry commence. Before them, we are told, there existed nothing but the epos, or daktylic hexameter poetry, of which much has been said in my former volume,—being legendary stories or adventures narrated, together with addresses or hymns to the gods. ”

“ Herodotus asserts that Arion first named, invented, and taught the dithyramb at Corinth; but, as Bentley triumphantly observes, Athenaeus has preserved to us the very verses of Archilochus, his predecessor by a century, in which the song of the dithyramb is named. ”

“ In dealing with the lyric writers we shall therefore be on firmer ground.
Here, in the fragments of Archilochus already we find very strong evidence of the existence of love-poems addressed to men; indeed, it is impossible satisfactorily to explain Fr. 85—
ἀλλά μ’ ὁ λυσιμελής, ὦ ’ταῖρε, δάμναται πόθος, on any other supposition. ”

“ Such conduct as that described by this new Archilochus, even making every allowance for exaggeration, must have caused Themistocles to be both hated and feared among the insular allies, whose opinion was now of considerable importance to the Athenians. A similar sentiment grew up partially against him in Athens itself, and appears to have been connected with suspicions of treasonable inclinations towards the Persians. As the Persians could offer the highest bribes, a man open to corruption might naturally be suspected of inclinations towards their cause ”

“ There are in the fragments of Archilochus notes29 of tenderness and even delicacy, notes of a singularly impressive pathos. There are indeed all notes in him, from the bawdy to the divine. It would be absurd to call him a bad man—quite as absurd as to call him a good one. He is a man. And what makes him so fascinating is just this, that for the first time in literature a man expresses himself. His extraordinary greatness is almost a secondary matter by the side of that portentous phenomenon. It was the Ionians who produced him. ”

“ Others carry it down to a later date, and say that Homer was a contemporary of Archilochus; but Archilochus flourished about the 23d Olympiad, in the time of Gyges the Lydian, 500 years after Troy. Thus, concerning the age of the aforesaid poet, I mean Homer, and the discrepancies of those who have spoken of him, we have said enough in a summary manner for those who are able to investigate with accuracy. For it is possible to show that the opinions held about the facts themselves also are false. ”

“ And so it is their destiny to find neither willing table-companions, nor messmates when they are travelling by land or by sea, but only such as cannot help themselves; for such a fellow is always at you, plucking hold of your clothes or chin, or giving you a dig in the ribs with his elbow. "Most valuable are the feet in such a conjuncture," according to Archilochus, nay according to the wise Aristotle himself. For he being bothered with a talkative fellow, and wearied out with his absurd tales, and his frequent question, "Is not this wonderful, Aristotle?" ”

“ Archilochus addresses Father Zeus, declaring that his is the rule of heaven, and that he oversees all the works of man, both those which are base and those which are lawful, and has a care even for insolence and justice among wild beasts. ”

“ Accordingly Cephisodorus, the pupil of Isocrates the orator, in the third of his treatises addressed to Aristotle, says that a man might find several things expressed incorrectly by the other poets and sophists; as for instance, the expression used by Archilochus, That every man was immodest; and that apophthegm of Theodorus, That a man ought to get all he can, but to praise equality and moderation ”

“ This com- parison, made by a man not unacquainted with art, shows at all events that Archilochus must have possessed somewhat of the keen and delicate satire which in Plato was most severe where a dull lis- tener would be least sensible of it." (History of tlve Literature of Greece., i. p. 135.)
The satire of preceding writers, as displayed for example in the Margiles, was less pointed, because its objects were chosen out of the remote world which furnished all the personages of epic poetry ; while the iambics of Archilochus were aimed at those among whom he lived. ”

“ Theocritus (one must quote the whole of this, and waive the discussion of it) “is admirable in his peculiar style, but his rustic and pastoral muse shrinks not only from appearing in the forum, but even from approaching the city.” And then Pisander, Nicander, Euphorion, Tyrtæus, Callimachus, Philetas are slid over rapidly, while, though Aristarchus had sanctioned three iambographi, Simonides and Hipponax are passed in silence, Archilochus only receiving very high praise for vigour and all similar qualities. ”

“ Perhaps it was for this cowardly action, perhaps on account of his empty purse, that when he returned to Paros, one of its fair daughters, who had been his boyhood’s love, refused him her hand. Her father, also, denied his suit; whereupon the furious poet poured forth in stinging verses such a torrent of violent invective upon the girl and her whole family, that she, her father, and her sisters, are said to have taken refuge from his scurrilous attacks in suicide.
The public odium thus excited drove Archilochus from Paros. But the brand of cowardice was upon him. ”

“ There was little reason, then, for these Greeks to address love-poetry to their women, or, indeed, to sing of “love,” otherwise than in its purely animal aspect, at all. It remains to convince oneself, by an examination of what remains of their works, that they actually did not. It is, of course, a very general opinion that Archilochus, the earliest lyric poet about [20] whom we know anything of moment, addressed love-poetry to a woman, Neobule. ”

“ On one memorable occasion the Mityleneans fled, and Alkæus the poet, serving as an hoplite in their ranks, commemorated in one of his odes both his flight and the humiliating loss of his shield, which the victorious Athenians suspended as a trophy in the temple of Athênê at Sigeium. His predecessor Archilochus, and his imitator Horace, have both been frank enough to confess a similar misfortune, which Tyrtæus perhaps would not have endured to survive. [364] It was at length agreed by Mitylênê and Athens to refer the dispute to Periander of Corinth. ”

“ Archilochus uses the same device in censure; for in his iambics he introduces the father speaking as follows of his daughter:
“There is nothing beyond expectation, nothing that can be sworn impossible,” and the carpenter Charon in the iambic verse beginning
“I [care not for the wealth] of Gyges;” Sophocles, also, introduces Haemon, when defending Antigone against his father, as if quoting the opinion of others. One should also sometimes change enthymemes into moral maxims; for instance, “Sensible men should become reconciled when they are prosperous ”

“ It may be found in the alliterative Geste Hystoriale, above referred to (ed. Panton and Donaldson, p. 342) ; or in Lydgate's Siege of Troye, bk. iv. c. 32. Hecuba invites Achilles and Archilochus to meet her in the temple of Apollo. When they arrive, they are attacked by Paris and a band of men and soon killed, though Achilles first slays seven of his foes with his own hand.
'There kyld was the kyng, and the knight bothe,
And by treason in the temple tirnyt to dethe.'
Here 'the kyng' is Achilles, and 'the knyght' is Archilochus. ”

“ Woman is the great mainspring of existence; she it is who is the general cause of man's thoughts, emotions, passions, joys, and sorrows. Hence, as lyric poetry is the poetry of the heart, we find recorded in the verses of Grecian lyrists man's attitude toward woman in this period of "storm and stress" in the development of Greek nationality.
Archilochus is the father of iambic poetry, and he made it the medium of expression of personal passion and satire. With all the ardor of his nature, he loved Neobule, daughter of Lycambes, of the island of Paros, where the poet had made his home. ”