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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. Strom. i. p. 308d.; Procl. Chrestom. ap. 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 (l.c.) says that he lived under
Dareius (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. (
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. (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)
The most striking feature in the satirical Iambics of Hipponax is the change which he made
in the metre, by introducing a Spondee or Trochee in the last foot, instead of an Iambus.
This change made the verse irregular in its rhythm (lame
iambic), or Iambus Scazon (
When the variation on the sixth foot of the trimeter coexists with a spondee in the fifth
place, the verse becomes still more irregular, and can, in fact, hardly be considered an
Iambic verse, but is rather a. combination of an iambic diameter with a trochaic monometer.
Such lines are called by the grammarians Ischiorrhogic (broken-backed)
: they are very rarely used by Hipponax. The choliambics of Hipponax were imitated by many
later writers: among others, the
We know, from Suidas, that he wrote other poems besides his choliambi and his parody. His
choliambi formed two books, if not more. (Bekker, Anecd. vol. i. p. 85;
Pollux, 10.18.) The other poems mentioned by Suidas were probably lyrical. (See Welcker, p.
24.) As to parody, of which Suidas and Polemo (
The choliambics of Hipponax, though directed chiefly against the artists Bupalus and
Athenis, embraced also other objects of attack. He severely chastised the effeminate luxury
of his Ionian brethren; he did not spare his own parents; and he ventured even to ridicule
the gods. The ancients seem to have regarded him as the bitterest and most unkindly of all
satirists, generally coupling his name with the epithet in Od. xi. p. 1684, 51, et alib.; Cic. Epist. ad Fam. 7.24.) Leonidas of Tarentum, in an
elegant epigram, warns travellers not to pass too near his tomb, lest they rouse the sleeping
wasp (Brunck. Anal. vol. i. p. 246, No. 97); and Alcaeus of Messene says
that his grave, instead of being covered, like that of Sophocles, with ivy, and the vine, and
climbing roses, should be planted with the thorn and thistle. (Brunck, Anal. vol. i. p. 490, No. 18.) But Theocritus, probably with greater truth, warns the
wicked alone to beware of his tomb, and invites the good to sit near it without fear,
applying to the poet at the same time the honourable epithet of Anal. vol. i. p. 382, No. 20.)
Hipponax may be said to occupy a middle place between Archilochus and Aristophanes. He is as bitter, but not so earnest, as the former, while in lightness and jocoseness he more resembles the latter. Archilochus, in his greatest fury, never forgets his dignity: Hipponax, when most bitter, is still sportive. This extends to his language, which abounds with common words. Like most satirists, he does not spare the female sex, as, for instance, in the celebrated couplet in which he says that " there are two happy days in the life of a married man--that in which he receives his wife, and that in which he carries out her corpse."
There are still extant about a hundred lines of his poems, which are collected by
Hipponactis et Ananü Iambographorum Fragmenta,
Goetting. 1817, 8vo.)Poetae Lyrici
Graeci)Delect. Poes. Graec.)Fat. Aesop. C. Lachmannus et amic. emend., ceteror. poet. chcliamb. ab A.
Meinekio coll. et emend. Berol. 1845.)
Several ancient grammarians wrote in Hipponax, especially Hermippus of Smyrna. (Schol. ad Arist. Pac. 484;
Contemporary with Hipponax was another iambic poet, Ananius or Ananias. The two poets are so closely connected with one another that, of the existing fragments, it is sometimes impossible to determine which belongs to the one and which to the other.
The invention of the choliambus is by some ascribed to Ananius. One grammarian attributes
the regular Choliambus to H ipponax, and the Ischiorrhogic verse to Ananius (see Tyrwhitt,
Dissert. de Babrio, p. 17), but no reliance can be placed on this
statement. The fragments of Ananius accompany those of Hipponax in the collections mentioned
above. (Welcker, as above cited ; Müller, Hist. of Lit. of Greece,
pp. 141-143 ; Ulrici, Gesch. d. Hellen. Dichtkunst, vol. ii. pp.
308-316; Bode, Gesch. d. Hellen. Dichtkunst, vol. ii. pt. 1, pp.
330-344.)