Iambus 2 (Loeb fragment 192) and the later writer Maximus of Tyre called him "the sage of Lydia."Maximus of Tyre, Oration 36.1 From AristotleAristotle. Rhetoric 2.20 . and HerodotusHerodotus.
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In these poems, Callimachus presented a toned-down version of the archaic iambus. Horace avoids direct allusions to Callimachus, a fact which has sometimes been seen as a strategy in favour of the style of Archilochus and Hipponax.
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I, Greek Literature, 1985. , cf. Chapter 12, Comedy, p.366-367 Nothing of his work, however, survives except one iambic fragment (see below) and this is not from a comedy but instead seems to belong within the Iambus tradition.
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D. Mankin, Horace: Epodes,C.U.P., 8 For Alexandrian editors, however, iambus signified any poetry of an informal kind that was intended to entertain, and it seems to have been performed on similar occasions as elegy even though lacking elegy's decorum.J.P. Barron and P.E. Easterling, "Elegy and Iambus" in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P.Easterling and B.Knox (eds), Cambridge University Press (1985), page 120 The Archaic Greek poets Archilochus, Semonides and Hipponax were among the most famous of its early exponents. The Alexandrian poet Callimachus composed "iambic" poems against contemporary scholars, which were collected in an edition of about a thousand lines, of which fragments of thirteen poems survive.
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Engraving from Quinti Horatii Flacci Emblemata, Antwerp 1607, showing Socrates receiving the contents of a chamberpot, and a young man bullying his elders in a boat in the background. Iambus depicted the ugly and unheroic side of humanity. Iambus or iambic poetry was a genre of ancient Greek poetry that included but was not restricted to the iambic meter and whose origins modern scholars have traced to the cults of Demeter and Dionysus. The genre featured insulting and obscene languageChristopher Brown, in A Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets, D.E.Gerber (ed), Leiden 1997, pages 13–88Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), Introduction pages i–iv and sometimes it is referred to as "blame poetry".
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For example, Callimachus Iambus 1.2 reads: ἐκ τῶν ὅκου βοῦν κολλύ⸤βου π⸥ιπρήσκουσιν. A hole in the papyrus has obliterated βου π, but these letters are supplied by an ancient commentary on the poem. Second intermittent sources can be between ⸢ and ⸣. Quine corners are sometimes used instead of half brackets.
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Cf. p.50 These poems are generally agreed to be the origins of satire. Some modern scholars believe that Lycambes, Neobule, and her sisters were not actually the poet's contemporaries but stock characters from the iambic tradition;M.L.West, Studies in Early greek Elegy and Iambus, Berlin and New York (1974), page 27 others hold that they are merely meaningful names applied to the figures from Archilochus's life.
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Callimachus, Iambus Fr. 217 Pf.Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Luigi Lehnus, Susan Stephens (2011), Brill's Companion to Callimachus Embarrassed, Apollo revealed his divine nature. In order to persuade Branchus to abandon the herding and accompany him instead, Apollo guaranteed the safety and promised a supply of good graze to the flocks. After they became lovers, Apollo taught Branchus the mantic arts. Apollo also looked after the flocks while Branchus practiced the art.
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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.
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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 SapphoChristopher G. Brown, 'Hipponax' inA Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets, Douglas E. Gerber (ed.), BRILL, 1997. . Cf. p.
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In order to understand the music she recorded, "Halpern had to free herself from the standard concepts and structures of Western music and notation. To analyze the beat, Halpern made use of medieval modal notation, which used stressed and unstressed beats. This showed that the beat fell into prescribed patterns, similar to iambus, dactyl, trochee, and anapaest." Through it all, she had much respect for Native music, and considered it extremely important.
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Philostratus, Epistolae 8.57.4Philip R. Hardie (1999), Virgil: General articles and the Eclogues On becoming a prophet, Branchus is said to have transplanted a shoot of the laurel tree at Delphi in the precinct of Didyma. The branches of this laurel tree was used by him to cure illness of the Milesians.Callimachus, Iambus Fr.229 Pf.Pfeiffer, Rudolf (1923) Callimachi fragmenta nuper reperta Milesians built temples dedicated to Branchus and Apollo and named them Philesia, after the kiss of Branchus.
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He identified with, among others, Sappho and Alcaeus of Mytilene, composing Sapphic and Alcaic stanzas, and with Archilochus, composing poetic invectives in the Iambus tradition (in which he adopted the metrical form of the epode or "iambic distich"). Horace also wrote verses in dactylic hexameter, employing a conversational and epistolary style. Virgil, his contemporary, composed dactylic hexameters on light and serious themes and his verses are generally regarded as "the supreme metrical system of Latin literature".Richard F. Thomas, Virgil: Georgics Vol.
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The nature of iambus changed from one epoch to another, as becomes obvious if we compare two poems that are otherwise very similarHorace's Epode 10 (around 30 BC) and the "Strasbourg" papyrus, a fragment attributed either to Archilochus or Hipponax (seventh and sixth century respectively). The modern world became aware of the Greek poem only in 1899, when it was discovered by R. Reitzenstein among other papyri at the University Library of Strasbourg. He published it straight away, recognizing its significance and its resemblance to Horace's poem. This study however begins with Horace and it is based on comments by Eduard Fraenkel.
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Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Elegiac Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), note 1 page 235 Moreover, the last line could be imitating an image from Homer's Odyssey (5.482), where Odysseus covers himself with leaves though some scholars think the key word might be corrupted.Thomas Hudson- Williams, The elegies of Theognis and other elegies included in the Theognidean sylloge (1910), note 428 pages 205–6see also J.M.Edmonds (ed.), 'Elegiac Poems of Theognis, Elegy and Iambus Vol.1, note 103, Persus Digital Library Odyssey 5.476–83 The smothering accumulation of eta () sounds in the last line of the Greek is imitated here in the English by mound round.
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Aristotle Rhetoric 3.17.1418b28, cited by Douglas E. Gerber (1999), Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library, pages 93–95 There is nothing in those two fragments to suggest that Archilochus is speaking in those roles (we rely entirely on Aristotle for the context) and possibly many of his other verses involved role-playing too. It has even been suggested by one modern scholar that imaginary characters and situations might have been a feature of the poetic tradition within which Archilochus composed, known by the ancients as iambus. The two poems quoted by Aristotle help to date the poet's life (assuming of course that Charon and the unnamed father are speaking about events that Archilochus had experienced himself).
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5.4–5 Powell ap. Ath. 15.699b, cited by Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Elegiac Poetry, Loeb (1999), page 77 which is consistent with conventional sexual themes in Greek elegy. However, as noted by Martin Litchfield West, Mimnermus could have been a pederast and yet still have composed elegies about his love for Nanno: "Greek pederasty ... was for the most part a substitute for heterosexual love, free contacts between the sexes being restricted by society."Martin Litchfield West, Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus, Walter de Gruyter and Co. (1974), page 75 Mimnermus apparently was also capable of playing all by himself—Strabo described him as "both a pipe-player and an elegiac poet".
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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.
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West, M. L.,Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus, Walter de Gruyter and Co. (1974), page 75 Greek art and literature portray these relationships as sometimes erotic or sexual, or sometimes idealized, educational, non-consummated, or non-sexual. A distinctive feature of Greek male-male eros was its occurrence within a military setting, as with the Theban Band, though the extent to which homosexual bonds played a military role has been questioned.Leitao, David, "The legend of the Theban Band", in M. Craven Nussbaum and J. Sihvola, The Sleep of Reason: Erotic Experience and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome, Chicago University Press (2002), pp. 140–150 Some Greek myths have been interpreted as reflecting the custom of paiderasteia, most notably the myth of Zeus kidnapping Ganymede to become his cupbearer in the Olympian symposium.
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Some ancient writers ascribe to him the Nomos Orthios, which Herodotus attributes to Arion. Olympus was a great inventor in rhythm as well as in music. To the two existing species of rhythm, the ison, in which the arsis and thesis are equal (as in the Dactyl and Anapaest), and the diplasion, in which the arsis is twice the length of the thesis (as in the Iambus and Trochee), he added a third, the hemiolion in which the length of the arsis is equal to two short syllables, and that of the thesis to three, as, in the cretic foot, the paeons, and the Bacchic foot, though there is some doubt whether the last form was used by Olympus. There is no mention of any poems composed by Olympus.
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Few fragments of his work survived through the Byzantine period despite his earlier popularity with Alexandrian poets and scholars. The Christian fathers disapproved of his abusive and obscene verses and he was also singled out as unedifying by Julian the Apostate, the pagan emperor, who instructed his priests to "abstain not only from impure and lascivious acts but also from speech and reading of the same character...No initiate shall read Archilochus or Hipponax or any of the authors who write the same kind of thing."Ep. 48, 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 158 Moreover, Hipponax's Ionic dialect and his extensive use of foreign words made his work unsuited to an ancient education system that promoted Attic, the dialect of classical Athens. Today the longest fragment of complete, consecutive verses comprises only six lines.
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