- Hipponax
Hipponax of Ephesus was an
Ancient Greek iambic poet .Expelled from
Ephesus in 540 BC by the tyrant Athenagoras, he took refuge inClazomenae , where he spent the rest of his life in poverty. His deformed figure and malicious disposition exposed him to the caricature of the Chian sculptors Bupalus and Athenis, upon whom he revenged himself by issuing against them a series ofsatire s. They are said to have hanged themselves likeLycambes and his daughters when assailed by Archilochus, the model and predecessor of Hipponax.His coarseness of thought and feeling, his want of grace and taste, and his numerous allusions to matters of merely local interest prevented his becoming a favourite in Attica. He was considered the inventor of
parody and of a peculiar metre, the scazon orcholiamb , which substitutes aspondee for the final iambus of an iambic senarius, and is an appropriate form for theburlesque character of his poems. He composed in a form of Ionic Greek that includes an unusually high proportion of Lydianloanword s.Among his aphorisms is "There are two days when a woman is a pleasure: the day one marries her and the day one buries her."
References
*Easterling, P.E. (Series Editor), Bernard M.W. Knox (Editor), "Cambridge History of Classical Literature", v.I, Greek Literature, 1985. ISBN 0-521-21042-9, cf. Chapter 5, "Elegy and Iambus", pp.158-164 on Hipponax.
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*1911
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