Hipponax (; ; gen. Ἱππώνακτος; ), of Ephesus and later Clazomenae, was an Ancient Greek iambic poet who composed verses depicting the vulgar side of life in Ionian society. He was celebrated by ancient authors for his malicious wit, especially for his attacks on some contemporary sculptors, Bupalus and Athenis. Hipponax was reputed to be physically deformed, which might have been inspired by the nature of his poetry.Christopher G. Brown, 'Hipponax' in A Companion to Greek Lyric Poets, Douglas E. Gerber (ed.), Brill (1997) pages 84
Life Ancient authorities record the barest details about his life (sometimes contradicting each other) and his extant poetry is too fragmentary to support autobiographical interpretation (a hazardous exercise even at the best of times).Christopher G. Brown, 'Hipponax', in A Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets, Douglas E. Gerber (ed), BRILL, 1997. . Cf. p.81
The Marmor Parium, only partially preserved in the relevant place, dates him to 541/40 BCE, a date supported by Pliny the Elder in this comment on the theme of sculpture:
Archeological corroboration for these dates is found on the pedestal of a statue in Delos, inscribed with the names Micciades and Achermus and dated to 550–30 BCE.Pliny, Natural History, translated by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), including archeological notes 1 and 2, page 343 The poet therefore can be safely dated to the second half of the sixth century BC.David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classical Press (1982), page 373 According to Athenaeus, he was small, thin and surprisingly strongAthenaeus 12.552c-d, cited by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 347 The Byzantine encyclopaedia Suda, recorded that he was expelled from Ephesus by the tyrants Athenagoras and Comas, then settled in Clazomenae, and that he wrote verses satirising Bupalus and Athenis because they made insulting likenesses of him.Suda, translated by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 345 A scholiast commenting on Horace's Epodes recorded two differing accounts of the dispute with Bupalus, characterized however as "a painter in Clazomenae": Hipponax sought to marry Bupalus's daughter but was rejected because of his physical ugliness, and Bupalus portrayed him as ugly in order to provoke laughter. According to the same scholiast, Hipponax retaliated in verse so savagely that Bupalus hanged himself.Pseudo-Acron on Horace, Epodes, cited by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 351 Hipponax in that case closely resembles Archilochus of Paros, an earlier iambic poet, who reportedly drove a certain Lycambes and his daughters to hang themselves after he too was rejected in marriage.Christopher G. Brown, 'Hipponax', in A Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets, Douglas E. Gerber (ed.), BRILL, 1997. . Cf. p.50 Such a coincidence invites scepticism.B.M. Knox, 'Elegy and Iambus: Hipponax' in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. Easterling and B. Knox (eds.), Cambridge University Press (1985), page 159 The comic poet Diphilus took the similarity between the two iambic poets even further, representing them as rival lovers of the poet Sappho.Christopher G. Brown, 'Hipponax' inA Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets, Douglas E. Gerber (ed.), BRILL, 1997. . Cf. p.82
The life of Hipponax, as revealed in the poems, resembles a low-life saga centred on his private enmities, his amorous escapades and his povertyDavid A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classical Press (1982), page 373 but it is probable he was another Petronius, depicting low-life characters while actually moving in higher social circles.Christopher G. Brown, 'Hipponax' inA Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets, Douglas E. Gerber (ed.), BRILL, 1997. . Cf. p.80 In one fragment, Hipponax decries "Bupalus, the mother-fucker () with Arete", the latter evidently being the mother of Bupalus, yet Arete is presented as performing fellatio on Hipponax in another fragment and, elsewhere, Hipponax complains "Why did you go to bed with that rogue Bupalus?", again apparently referring to Arete (whose name ironically is Greek for 'virtue').fragments 12, 17, translated and annotated by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 363 and 367fragment 15, translated by B.M. Knox, 'Elegy and Iambus: Hipponax' in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. Easterling and B. Knox (eds.), Cambridge University Press (1985), page 160 The poet is a man of action but, unlike Archilochus, who served as a warrior on Thasos, his battlefields are close to home:
Hipponax's quarrelsome disposition is also illustrated in verses quoted by Tzetzes, where the bard abuses a painter called Mimnes, and advises him thus:
Work Hipponax composed within the iambus tradition which, in the work of Archilochus, a hundred years earlier, appears to have functioned as ritualized abuse and obscenity associated with the religious cults of Demeter and Dionysus but which, in Hipponax's day, seems rather to have had the purpose of entertainment. In both cases, the genre featured scornful abuse, a bitter tone and sexual permissiveness.Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), pags 1–3
Unlike Archilochus, however, he frequently refers to himself by name, emerging as a highly self-conscious figure, and his poetry is more narrow and insistently vulgar in scope:Christopher G. Brown, 'Hipponax' inA Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets, Douglas E. Gerber (ed.), BRILL, 1997. . pages 80, 83 "with Hipponax, we are in an unheroic, in fact, a very sordid world",B.M. Knox, 'Elegy and Iambus: Hipponax' in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. Easterling and B. Knox (ed.s), Cambridge University Press (1985), page 159 amounting to "a new conception of the poet's function."David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classical Press (1982), page 374
He was considered the inventor of a peculiar metre, the scazon ("halting iambic" as Murray calls itCf. Murray, 1897, p.88) or choliamb, which substitutes a spondee or trochee for the final iambus of an iambic senarius, and is an appropriate form for the burlesque character of his poems. As an ancient scholar once put it:
Little of his work survives despite its interest to Alexandrian scholars, who collected it in two or three books.David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classical Press (1982), page 374 Most of the surviving fragments are in choliambs but others feature trochaic tetrameter and even dactyls, the latter sometimes in combination with iambs and even on their own in dactylic hexameter, imitating epic poetry.Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 8 Ancient scholars in fact credited him with inventing parody and Athenaeus quoted this diatribe against a glutton 'Euromedontiades', composed in dactylic hexameter in mock-heroic imitation of Homer's Odyssey: Muse, sing of Eurymedontiades, sea-swilling Charybdis, his belly a sharp-slicing knife, his table manners atrocious; sing how, condemned by public decree, he will perish obscenely under a rain of stones, on the beach of the barren salt ocean''''—fragment 128fragment 128, translated by B.M. Knox, 'Elegy and Iambus: Hipponax' in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. Easterling and B. Knox (eds.), Cambridge University Press (1985), page 159'Euromedontiades' means 'son of Euromedon', who was a king of giants mentioned by Homer (Odyssey 7.58f.); Charybdis is also mentioned by Homer (Odyssey 12.104); Aristotle named Hegemon of Thasos as the founder of parody (Poetics 1448a12) but he meant thereby that Hegemon was the first to make parody a profession—Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), notes 4, 6, 8 page 459 Most archaic poets (including the iambic poets Archilochus and Semonides) were influenced by the Ionian epic tradition, as represented in the work of Homer. Except for parody, Hipponax composed as if Homer never existed, avoiding not only heroic sentiment but even epic phrasing and vocabulary.B.M. Knox, 'Elegy and Iambus: Hipponax' in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. Easterling and B. Knox (eds.), Cambridge University Press (1985), page 158 He employed a form of Ionic Greek that included an unusually high proportion of Anatolian and particularly Lydian loanwords,J.Adiego 'Greek and Lydian', in A History of Ancient Greek: from the beginnings to late antiquity, A.F.Christidis (ed.), Cambridge University Press (2001) Page 768-72 as for example here where he addresses Zeus with the outlandish Lydian word for 'king' (nominative ):Zeus, father Zeus, sultan of the Olympian gods,why have you not given me gold...?—fragment 38fragment 38, translated by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 385
Eating, defecating and fornicating are frequent themes and often they are employed together, as in fragment 92, a tattered papyrus which narrates a sexual encounter in a malodorous privy, where a Lydian-speaking woman performs some esoteric and obscene rites on the narrator, including beating his genitals with a fig branch and inserting something up his anus, provoking incontinence and finally an attack by dung beetles—a wild scene that possibly inspired the 'Oenothea' episode in Petronius's Satyricon.B.M. Knox, 'Elegy and Iambus: Hipponax' in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. Easterling and B. Knox (eds.), Cambridge University Press (1985), page 163
The extant work also includes fragments of epodes (fr. 115–118) but the authorship is disputed by many modern scholars, who attribute them to Archilochus on various grounds, including for example the earlier poet's superior skill in invective and the fragments' resemblance to the tenth epode of Horace (an avowed imitator of Archilochus).David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, Bristol Classical Press (1982), page 157 Archilochus might also have been the source for an unusually beautiful line attributed to HipponaxThe Hipponax fragment 119 might have been a contamination of the Archilochus fragments 118 ( / Would that I might thus touch Neoboule on her hand) and 196a.6 ( / a beautiful, tender maiden)—Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), note 1 for fr. 119 page 159 (a line that has also been described "as clear, melodious and spare as a line of Sappho"):B.M. Knox, 'Elegy and Iambus: Hipponax' in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. Easterling and B. Knox (eds.), Cambridge University Press (1985), page 164 —fr. 119If only I might have a maiden who is both beautiful and tender.Fragment 119, translated by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 451
Influence Hipponax influenced Alexandrian poets searching for alternative styles and uses of language, such as Callimachus and Herodas,Christopher G. Brown, 'Hipponax' in A Companion to Greek Lyric Poets, Douglas E. Gerber (ed.), Brill (1997) pages 80, 82 and his colourful reputation as an acerbic, social critic also made him a popular subject for verse, as in this choliambic epigram by Theocritus: Ὁ μουσοποιὸς ἐνθάδ᾽ ῾Ιππῶναξ κεῖται. κεἰ μὲν πονηρός, μὴ ποτέρχευ τῷ τύμβῳ· εἰ δ᾽ ἐσσὶ κρήγυός τε καὶ παρὰ χρηστῶν, θαρσέων καθίζευ, κἢν θέλῃς ἀπόβριξον.Here lies the poet Hipponax. If you are a scoundrel, do not approach the tomb; but if you are honest and from worthy stock, sit down in confidence and, if you like, fall asleep,Theocritus epig. 19 Gow, cited by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 347 or in this 19th century rhyming translation by C.S.Calverley:
Tuneful Hipponax rests him here. Let no base rascal venture near. Ye who rank high in birth and mind