Archilochus

His father, Telesicles, who was of noble family, had conducted a colony to Thasos, in obedience to the command of the Delphic oracle. To this island Archilochus himself, hard pressed by poverty, afterwards removed. Another reason for leaving his native place was personal disappointment and indignation at the treatment he had received from Lycambes, a citizen of Paros, who had promised him his daughter Neobule in marriage, but had afterwards withdrawn his consent. Archilochus, taking advantage of the licence allowed at the feasts of Demeter, poured out his wounded feelings in unmerciful satire. He accused Lycambes of perjury, and recited such verses against his daughters, that Lycambes and his daughters are said to have hanged themselves.

Along with the epics of Homer and Hesiod, the satires of Archilochus were one of the mainstays of itinerant rhapsodes, who made a living declaiming poetry at both religious festivals and private homes.

At Thasos the poet passed some unhappy years; his hopes of wealth were disappointed:

These golden matters
:Of Gyges and his treasuries
:Are no concern of mine.
:Jealousy has no power over me,
:Nor do I envy a god his work,
:And I don't burn to rule.
:Such things have no
:Fascination for my eyes.

Some Saian mountaineer
:Struts today with my shield.
:I threw it down by a bush and ran
:When the fighting got hot.
:Life seemed somehow more precious.
:It was a beautiful shield.
:I know where I can buy another
:Exactly like it, just as round.

The writings of Archilochus consisted of elegies, hymns-- one of which used to be sung by the victors in the Olympic games-- and of poems in the iambic and trochaic measures. Greek rhetors credited him with the invention of iambic poetry and its application to satire. The only previous measures in Greek poetry had been the epic hexameter, and its offshoot the elegiac metre; but the slow measured structure of hexameter verse was utterly unsuited to express the quick, light motions of satire.

Archilochus made use of the iambus and the trochee, and organized them into the two forms of metre known as the iambic trimeter and the trochaic tetrameter. The trochaic metre he generally used for subjects of a vicarious nature; the iambic for satires. He was also the first to make use of the arrangement of verses called the epode. Horace in his metres to a great extent follows Archilochus. All ancient authorities unite in praising the poems of Archilochus, in terms which appear exaggerated. His verses seem certainly to have possessed strength, flexibility, nervous vigour, and, beyond everything else, impetuous vehemence and energy: Horace speaks of the "rage" of Archilochus, and Hadrian calls his verses "raging iambics." By his countrymen he was reverenced as the equal of Homer, and statues of these two poets were dedicated on the same day. His poems were written in the old Ionic dialect.

Recent discoveries

Reference

Translation by Guy Davenport Archilochos Sappho Alkman: Three Lyric Poets of the Late Greek Bronze Age

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