Archilochus

• Born: c. 680 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Paros, Greece
• Died: c. 640 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Paros (?), Greece

Other literary forms

Archilochus (or-KIHL-uh-kuhs) is remembered only for his poetry.

Achievements

Archilochus was well known in antiquity as an innovator, especially in metrics. His metrical forms include iambic trimeter, elegiac couplets, trochaic tetrameter, epodes (poems in which a longer metrical unit is followed by a shorter one), and asynartete (verses consisting of two units having different rhythms). Although he is traditionally said to have been the inventor of iambic and epodic poetry, it is possible that poems in these meters were written earlier but failed to survive. Archilochus’s technical innovations, rather, may be seen in the skilled combination of established meters in his epodes and asynartete. Archilochus writes mostly in an Ionic Greek, imbued with the language and especially the vocabulary of the epic tradition. In fact, he was frequently admired by the ancients for his successful imitation of Homer, and Homeric influence, on both theme and vocabulary, can be seen in Archilochus’s surviving fragments. The view that Archilochus is an anti-Homeric poet, at least in his rejection of epic standards and values, is increasingly questioned today. Archilochus’s elegiac poems generally reflect the martial or hortatory themes found in other Archaic Greek elegists, including Tyrtaeus and Theognis; elegy was not specifically associated with lament until the fifth century b.c.e. In general, Archilochus’s poems are unbound by any rigid restriction of particular themes to particular meters. Not all his elegiacs are about war, and not all his iambics possess the invective or satirical mood to which that meter was restricted later in the Hellenistic period. Nearly all of Archilochus’s poetry is written in the first person, and he has often been called the first European lyric poet. Modern scholars, however, are becoming increasingly convinced that Archilochus’s invective poetry was part of an oral tradition of iambus, or Greek blame poetry, possibly cultic in origin and in performance and at least as old as the epic tradition, which used stock characters and the first-person persona in a conventional way. If this is true, Archilochus’s “lyricism” in the modern sense of “expressing individual emotions” is much more formal and limited in scope than has heretofore been realized.

Archilochus’s meters and style were imitated by later monodic Greek poets, including Alcaeus and Anacreon, but ancient admiration of Archilochus’s skilled manipulation of meter was balanced by the poet’s perhaps unjustified reputation for violent and abusive verse. The fifth century lyric poet Pindar himself criticized Archilochus for such violence in a Pythian ode. There is a suggestion that Archilochus was the butt of some later Greek comedy. Archilochus’s poetry was evidently very influential on the iambics of the Hellenistic poet Callimachus, on the satirical poems of Catullus, and especially on the Epodes (c. 30 b.c.e.; English translation, 1638) of Horace. The poet was also the subject of several pieces in the Palatine Anthology. Archilochus’s influence on more modern poets has been limited by the fragmentary preservation of his poetry.

Biography

A general biographical sketch of Archilochus can be drawn from the extant fragments, as well as from ancient sources that were clearly dependent for information on Archilochus’s poetry. Particularly informative are several third and first century b.c.e. inscriptions that were found on Archilochus’s native Paros and are usually called the Monumentum Archilochium. These inscriptions were mounted in a sanctuary of Archilochus, the Archilocheion, founded in the third century b.c.e., and are evidence of the poet’s posthumous appeal to the inhabitants of his birthplace. Unfortunately, nearly all the available biographical information concerning Archilochus must be qualified by its ultimate poetic source. Although Archilochus does use the first-person persona and often provides apparent autobiographical information in his poetry, there is little that can be verified by independent sources. Modern scholars tend to argue that many of Archilochus’s personal statements, especially in iambus, are actually conventions of the genre and provide little information about the life of the poet himself.

Even the dating of Archilochus is much debated. The poet’s reference to a full eclipse of the sun in poem 74 D. suggests a date of either 711 or 648 b.c.e. The discovery in Thasos of the late seventh century tombstone of Archilochus’s friend Glaucus (see, for example, poem 56 D.) makes the later period more likely for the poet’s floruit. It is, therefore, probably safe to assume that Archilochus lived during the mid-seventh century b.c.e., perhaps from 680 to 640 b.c.e.

Traditionally, Archilochus is said to have been the son of Telesicles, a Parian aristocrat, and a slave woman, Enipo, but this bastard status may be a fictional poetic stance (“Enipo” may be derived from enipe, an epic word for “rebuke” or “invective”). It is fairly certain, however, that both Archilochus’s life and his poetry reflect the history and rich Ionian tradition of Paros, the Aegean island on which he grew up. In the seventh century b.c.e., Paros organized a colony on the gold-rich island of Thasos, and it is probable that both Archilochus’s father and the poet himself were involved in this venture. Mention of both islands occurs frequently in the surviving fragments. Archilochus’s common martial themes mirror the military concerns of the Greek Archaic Age, when colonization and intense rivalry between city- and island-states led to frequent warfare. The tradition that Archilochus was a mercenary soldier may be a misinterpretation of his own poetry, but the evidence suggests that he was often called on to fight, both for Paros and Thasos, against the Thracians, Euboeans, and Naxians. He is said to have been killed in battle by a Naxian named Corax, but this name, too (which means “crow”), may be derived from the invective tradition. The bulk of Archilochus’s extant fragments do not support the antimilitaristic sentiment that some have noted in such poems as “On My Shield,” but rather suggest the patriotic sentiments of an Archaic Greek who knew his human weaknesses on the battlefield. Archilochus does not reject the martial world, but rather sees himself as a “soldier-poet.”

The Monumentum Archilochium provides the mythic tale of how Archilochus as a boy met the Muses, who gave him a lyre in exchange for the cow that his father had sent him to sell. This etiology of Archilochus’s poetic inspiration may have been derived from the poet’s own work and is almost certainly an imitation of Hesiod’s encounter with the Muses.

The best-known portion of Archilochus’s poetry is concerned with his aborted engagement to Neobule, the daughter of Lycambes. According to tradition, Lycambes, said to have been an acquaintance of the poet’s father, agreed to a match between Neobule and Archilochus. For unknown reasons, Lycambes later changed his mind, and Neobule married someone else. Much of Archilochus’s invective poetry is directed against Lycambes and two of his daughters (the Lycambides), who are said to have hanged themselves as a result of the poet’s bitter attacks. The entire Neobule story has by many scholars come to be considered spurious autobiographical material, despite the apparent confirmation of the tale suggested by a Hellenistic epitaph poem for the Lycambides. The suicide theme could be the result of the “killing-satire” tradition. In addition, the morphological relationship between Lyc-amb-es, i-amb-os, and dithyr-amb-os suggests to some modern scholars, including Martin West, that Lycambes and his daughters were not historical personages but rather stock characters in a traditional iambus, or blame poetry, possibly with some original cultic link with Dionysus and Demeter. The establishment of the Archilocheion sanctuary on Paros gives some confirmation of the poet’s possible cultic connections.

Analysis

Archilochus’s poetry sprang from the rich oral poetic heritage of prehistoric and Archaic Greece, and especially of Ionia. It was influenced not only by the impersonal, formulaic, epic tradition ending with Homer, but also by a parallel oral tradition of more personal expression that led, beginning with Archilochus in the mid-seventh century b.c.e., to Greek iambic, elegiac, and lyric poetry. It is probable that the invective mood, animated dialogues, and vivid expression of personal feelings that fill Archilochus’s poems were not inventions of the poet, but rather his inheritance from the iambic and elegiac traditions, which Archilochus utilized in his own distinctive, usually unorthodox, manner. Interaction between the epic and lyric traditions is particularly evident in Archilochus’s poetry, in which the poet not only uses but also often semantically transforms Homeric words, epithets, and even scenes. Archilochus’s poetry is filled with metaphors that are often derived from Homeric, martial sources, but which are abrupt and violent in their poetic context; the much-discussed metaphor of a woman taking a town by storm through her beauty is one example.

Archilochus can also be seen to use conventional themes in unconventional ways: for example, his “On My Shield,” in which he revises traditional military values; his unorthodox propemptikon or “bon voyage” poem (fragment 79a D.), which is really a wish for an evil voyage for a personal enemy; and his seduction poetry, which has, at least once, in the Cologne Epode, an unconventional climax. His poetry also shows a fondness for animal fables in the tradition of Aesop; Archilochus uses these fables, often in unusual contexts, as brief metaphors or extended allegories. The biographical Archilochus may lie hidden behind the persona of his poetry, but the poetry itself reveals the talents of an original and unorthodox mind whose contributions to the Greek iambic and elegiac traditions are monumental. There may have been a lost “lyric” tradition before Archilochus, but through his personal, first-person poetry, a distinctive form of poetic expression developed that lies at the beginning of the European lyric tradition.

The fragments of Archilochus’s work reveal a dynamic poetry that uses the vocabulary and themes of the oral epic and iambic traditions to create the impression of a personal voice on which modern lyric poetry is ultimately based. It is especially through his unconventional use of standard words and concepts that Archilochus’s style develops its forceful and unexpected turns of thought and expression. Although critical discussion of Archilochus’s life and poetry may never be free from the controversies occasioned by the lack of primary evidence, enough of his work survives to show his original contributions to the European poetic tradition, especially in the areas of metrical experimentation, iambic or invective poetry, and lyric or first-person expression.

Fragment 67a D.

Fragment 67a D. is a trochaic tetrameter example of the hortatory poem usually expressed in elegiacs. It forms part of a thematic group in Archilochus’s poetry on tlesmosyne or “endurance” (fragments 7 D., 68 D., and 58 D.). Significantly, this group is not bound to a particular meter and is composed of both elegiac and trochaic tetrameter. The exhortative theme is distinctive in 67a D. in that it is an introspective address to the poet’s thumos, his “heart,” rather than to another person (such as Glaucus in 68 D.). Address to one’s own thumos and reflection on one’s own state of mind are found in such epics as the Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614), but Archilochus’s adaptation of this epic trope to the first-person persona reveals the ability to distance oneself from one’s poetic persona, an ability that is essential to the lyric mode. In 67a D., Archilochus addresses his heart in a military or nautical context, as if his heart is under siege or at sea: “thrown into confusion” (kukőmene); “ward off” (alexou). The vocabulary is Homeric, but the context is original. The poet’s advice to his heart is climaxed in lines 4 through 6 with a pair of parallel imperative phrases. The first pair, “don’t in victory openly gloat” and “nor in defeat at home fall in grief,” is balanced not only in sentiment but also in word order, where Greek participial references to victory (niknő) and defeat (nikētheis) are completed in meter and in sense by the imperative forms “gloat” (agalleo) and “grieve” (odureo). In the second pair of imperative phrases, the emphasis is not so much on the contradictory imperatives “rejoice” (chaire) and “give sorrow” (aschala) or on the objects of these actions, “good fortune” (chartoisin) and “evils” (kakoisin), but on the adverbial qualification of these commands at the beginning of the last line, “at least not excessively” (mē liēn). This plea for moderation in the expression of emotion was a traditional Archaic Greek sentiment, best known in the form of the Apollonian dictum “nothing in excess” (mēden agan), but Archilochus sums up this concept, in the rest of the last line, by a final imperative phrase semantically charged in a striking way: “Recognize what a rhythm of order controls human life.”

Archilochus’s use of rhusmos, an Ionic form of the Greek word rhuthmos, is ambiguous. The primary meaning of this word is “measure” or “order,” but eventually the word developed a secondary meaning of flux, or change. Both meanings of the word may be operative in the poem and result in a paradoxical reading of the human situation: The order (rhuthmos) of human life is the constant change (rhuthmos) that Archilochus exhorts his heart to accept. Fragment 67a D. thus demonstrates Archilochus’s original use of Homeric vocabulary and concepts as well as the hortatory mood of Greek elegy in a distinctive meter.

“On My Shield”

“On My Shield,” composed of a pair of elegiac couplets, is Archilochus’s best-known piece, in which he abandons his shield in battle. The shield, “untarnished by arms,” that is, “brand-new,” is left beside a bush where it is picked up by an enemy Saian (a Thracian). The poet’s preference for saving his own life over keeping his shield (which he says he can always replace) has usually been interpreted as an outright rejection of epic, martial standards in favor of a more personal, self-centered attitude. Even in antiquity, this poem was contrasted with the Spartan woman’s command to her man to return from battle “with his shield or on it,” and Archilochus was known, derogatorily, as a rhipsaspis, or “shield-thrower,” “deserter.” Several later poets, including Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Horace, imitated this poem.

It should be noted, however, that, unlike some of his later imitators, Archilochus does not actually throw away his shield but rather hides it under a bush. Archilochus’s act is not a frantic gesture in the midst of headlong flight but a calculated attempt to save his life and, possibly, his shield. The sentiment is certainly different from the Homeric battle standard but only in emphasis. Archilochus, whose military adventures clearly speak through these lines, is not spurning martial values, but rather placing his emphasis on the preservation of life instead of gear.

The noble value that the shield possesses in epic (for example, the importance of the shield of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611) is certainly undermined by Archilochus, who says of his shield that he can buy a “better one” (ou kakiő), but the underlying implication of this purchase is that Archilochus is prepared to enter battle again in the future. On the level of language, there appears to be a contrast in the poem between standard Homeric expressions and their unconventional contexts. The poet’s lighthearted attitude toward the loss of his shield is reinforced in several ways. First, he uses the derogatory Homeric word errető (to hell with it) in an emphatic position in reference to the shield. The epithet amőmēton (blameless), used for the lost shield, is also significant, for the poet’s preference for a rare Homeric form of “blameless” instead of the more common epic form amumona is perhaps deliberately and comically unorthodox. Archilochus uses an even rarer form (amőmon) of this epithet in the Cologne Epode. Finally, the contrast between loss of shield and saving of life may be underscored by the possible phonological pun, unintelligible in translation, of Saion and exesaosa.

Fragment 112 D.

Archilochus also expresses personal, unconventional views in an unconventional way in fragment 112 D., which is metrically an example of his asynartetic poems, using a combination of dactylic tetrameter, ithyphallic, and iambic trimeter catalectic. Here the poet is describing not a martial experience but an emotional one, but this personal theme is expressed in a vividly Homeric vocabulary: Eros (Passion), which in Archaic Greek poetry was still an emotion rather than the anthropomorphic mythological figure (Cupid) of later periods, is “coiled beneath the heart” of Archilochus. The word elustheis (coiled) verbally recalls the epic scenes in which Odysseus was coiled beneath the Cyclops’s sheep and Priam at Achilles’ feet. In the second line, “Eros pours a thick mist over the poet’s eyes,” the words “pour” (echeuen) and “mist” (achlun) both invoke epic passages where the mist of death pours over a dying warrior. The Homeric vocabulary thus implies a vivid metaphor for Eros, which has a deathlike grasp on the poet and is depicted, like death, as an external rather than an internal force. Archilochus continues this unconventional use of Homeric vocabulary in the last line, where Eros “steals the tender heart from his breast.” Once again epic formulas for death are applied to Eros, but the epithet “tender” (hapalas) may be intentionally ambiguous; a secondary meaning of the word, “weak/feeble,” is perhaps implied by Archilochus as a subtle transformation of the Homeric epithet into a significant expression of the poet’s helplessness in the face of violent passion.

Cologne Epode

A papyrus find that was published as the Cologne Epode in 1975, not only added forty precious lines to the corpus of Archilochus but also has greatly advanced knowledge of the poet’s epodic and invective style. This epode, a composition of iambic trimeters, hemiepes, and iambic dimeter, is most easily accessible in this English translation by John Van Sickle. The papyrus, the beginning of which is lost, appears to pick up in the middle of a dialogue between a man and a woman. The conversation is being narrated by the man. Only the last four lines of the woman’s speech survive. The bulk of the extant poem is devoted to the man’s response, “point by point,” to the woman. The general background is an attempted seduction in which the woman argues against and the man for immediate physical union. The poem climaxes in a narration of sexual activity, the precise nature of which has been greatly debated. (Full intercourse and “heavy petting” are the apparent choices of interpretation.) A similar use of dialogue within narrative is employed by Archilochus in another recent papyrus find, which is also a seduction scene. The narrative in the Cologne Epode demonstrates Archilochus’s skilled use of a structure well suited to the tone of Ionian iambus, the genre of personal expression and ridicule in which the poet is here operating.

The world of Homer is not far to seek, in both the vocabulary and themes of the Cologne Epode. The use of the matronym “daughter of Amphimedo” is good epic diction, and the phrase “I shall obey as you order” is another obvious example of Homeric phraseology. Thematically, the epode is a close iambic adaption of Hera’s seduction of Zeus in the Iliad, book 14. The revelation in line 16 of the epode that Archilochus is probably talking to Neobule’s sister makes the issue of autobiographical experience particularly pressing, but comparison of the epode to book 14 suggests that it is not so much the narration of a spontaneous and emotional event as it is an artistic, stylized variation of a Homeric seduction. The Cologne Epode, perhaps more than any other extant Archilochean fragment, suggests the presence of an artificial rather than an authentic first-person persona.

Formality is especially evident in the depiction of the woman in a bucolic setting and the contrasting use of images from several Archaic Greek professions and activities in an erotic context. Although Archilochus’s adaptation of the bucolic setting from Homer is evidenced by the fact that both poems associate sexual union with wildly blooming flowers, Archilochus has integrated this association of the woman with the fertility of nature in a more basic way, into the very fiber of his vocabulary and imagery. The woman herself is described as “beautiful and tender” (kalē tereina), while her sister Neobule feels the brunt of Archilochus’s invective in her description as a withered flower (anthos d’ aperruēke). The final stage of this natural process is represented by the woman’s late mother, Amphimedo, “who now is covered by the mouldering earth.”

The concept and vocabulary, originally Homeric, is manipulated by Archilochus here into an unorthodox and subtle metaphor arguing in favor of the masculine demand of immediate sexual gratification. At the same time, the narrator disguises his eroticism behind references to various professions: rhetoric (“answering point by point”); architecture (“the coping stone” and “architrave”); navigation or horse racing (“I’ll hold my course”); war (“reconnoitering”); wrestling (“seizing her”); and animal husbandry (“hasty bitch, blind pups”). The last reference, to an old Greek proverb, also underscores Archilochus’s fondness for the use of animal fables as exempla. The proverb, arguing against hasty action, is a subtle ploy on the part of the narrator to disguise his own ambitions.

Bibliography

Bartol, Krystyna. “Where Was Iambic Performed? Some Evidence from the Fourth Century b.c.” Classical Quarterly 42, no. 1 (1992): 65. A discussion of the performance of iambic poetry in the fourth century b.c.e. Poems by Archilochus and Homer may have been presented during poetic competitions as suggested in a text by Heraclitus.

Burnett, Anne Pippin. Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1998. Explores the paradoxical career of Archilochus as both a professional soldier and poet, the combination of “Ares and the Muses,” as Burnett phrases it. This book also provides an even-handed view of Archilochus’s use of obscenity in his poems. Burnett points out that during the time Archilochus was writing, obscenity was seen not as an end in itself but as part of ritual, verbal attacks on enemies. As such, Archilochus undoubtedly regarded his use of obscenity as a poet in the same way he considered his use of weapons as a warrior. Both were means to the same end: triumph over an adversary.

Davenport, Guy. Introduction to Archilochos, Sappho, Alkman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. The placement of Archilochus among his contemporary poetic peers helps establish both his debt and contributions to the developing Greek poetic tradition. Davenport, who also translated and illustrated the selections in this volume, provides a brief but useful overview of Archilochus’s place in early Greek literature, pointing out that “Archilochus is the second poet of the West” (after Homer). Because Davenport himself is both a creative writer and a scholar his translations tend to be more interesting than traditional, academic efforts.

Finglass, P. J., C. Collard, and N. J. Richardson, eds. Hesperos: Studies in Ancient Greek Poetry Presented to M. L. West on His Seventieth Birthday. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. This collection of essays on ancient Greek poetry contains several essays that examine Archilochus’s works and the time in which he lived.

Gerber, Douglas. Introduction to Greek Iambic Poetry from the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries b.c. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. A solid essay that places Archilochus in the context of his times and his specific poetic genre. Gerber, who also provided the translations for the volume, offers a learned but accessible commentary on the techniques and methods of Greek verse of the period. Serving also as editor, Douglas has compiled a very useful volume.

Irwin, Elizabeth. “Biography, Fiction, and the Archilochaen Ainos.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 118 (1998): 177-183. An examination of the historicity of characters in Archilochus’s poetry. The question of the possible autobiographical nature of the poems remains open.

Rankin, H. D. Archilochus of Peros. Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Press, 1977. A good, in-depth review of the poet’s career and achievements, with an emphasis on the themes and content of his verse. Rankin points out that Archilochus was the “first poet in our literary tradition to use sexuality in a conscious and deliberate way as a main theme in his poetry.” Rankin’s frank discussion of Archilochus’s use of sexual themes and imagery helps the reader understand that the poet was not simply trying to shock the reader. In this and other areas, Rankin is especially helpful in his discussion of the role of poetry in Greek society of the time.

Will, Frederic. Archilochos. New York: Twayne, 1969. This volume provides a solid introduction to the study of the poet, his work, and his world. Because few of the basic facts known about the poet have changed—and little, in that sense, has been added—most of the material remains useful and can complement later works on Archilochus dealing more extensively with the interpretation of his work and his poetic techniques.