A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Ἱππῶναξ).

1. Of Ephesus, the son of Pytheus and Protis, was, after Archilochus and Simonides, the third of the classical Iambic poets of Greece. (Suid. s.v. Strabo xiv. p.642 ; Clem. Alex. Strom. i. p. 308d.; Procl. Chrestom. ap. Phot. Bibl. 239, p. 319, 29, ed. Bekker; Solin. 40.16.) He is ranked among the writers of the Ionic dialect. (Gram. Leid. ad calcem Gregor. Cor. p. 629; comp. Tzetz. Proleg. ad Lycoph. 690.) The exact date of Hipponax is not agreed upon, but it can be fixed within certain limits. The Parian marble (Ep. 43) makes him contemporary with the taking of Sardis by Cyrus (B. C. 546) : Pliny (36.5. s. 4.2) places him at the 60th Olympiad, B. C. 540: Proclus (l.c.) says that he lived under Dareius (B. C. 521-485) : Eusebius (Chron. Ol. 23), following an error already pointed out by Plutarch (de Mus. 6, vol. ii. p. 1133c. d.), made him a contemporary of Terpander; and Diphilus, the comic poet, was guilty of (or rather he assumed as a poetic licence) the same anachronism in representing both Archilochus and Hipponax as the lovers of Sappho. (Athen. 13.599d.)

Hipponax, then, lived in the latter half of the sixth century B. C., about half a century after Solon, and a century and a half later than Archilochus.

Like others of the early poets, Hipponax was distinguished for his love of liberty. The tyrants of his native city, Athenagoras and Comas, having expelled him from his home, he took up his abode at Clazomenae, for which reason he is sometimes called a Clazomenian. (Sulpicia, Sat. 5.6.) He there lived in great poverty, and, according to one account, died of want.

In person, Hipponax was little, thin, and ugly, but very strong. (Athen. 12.552c. d.; Ael. VH 10.6; Plin. l.c.) His natural defects, like the disappointment in love of Archilochus, furnished the occasion for the development of his satirical powers. The punishment of the daughters of Lycambes by the Parian poet finds its exact parallel in the revenge which Hipponax took on the brothers Bupalus and Athenis. These brothers, who were sculptors of Chios, made statues of Hipponax, in which they caricatured his natural ugliness ; and he in return directed all the power of his satirical poetry against them, and especially against Bupalus. (Plin. l.c.; Horat. Epod. 6.14 ; Lucian, Pseudol. 2; Philip. Epiyr. in Anth. Pal. 7.405; Brunck. Anal. vol. ii. p. 235; Julian. Epist. 30; Schol. ad Aristoph. Av. 575; Suid. s. v.) Later writers improved upon the resemblance between the stories of Archilochus and Hipponax, by making the latter poet a rejected suitor of the daughter of Bupalus, and by ascribing to the satire of Hipponax the same fatal effect as resulted from that of Archilochus. (Acron. ad Horat. l.c.) Pliny (l.c.) contradicts the story of the suicide of Bupalus by referring to works of his which were executed at a later period. As for the fragment of Hipponax (Fr. vi. p. 29, Welcker) ὦ Κλασομένοιοι, Βούπαλος κατέκτειθεν, if it be his (for it is only quoted anonymously by Rufinus, p. 2712, Putsch.), instead of being considered a proof of the story, it should more probably be regarded as having formed, through a too literal interpretation, one source of the error.