Abstract:
Archilochus’ life and the lethal effects of his poetry are legendary. Lycambes, having
promised his daughter Neoboule in marriage to Archilochus, breaks his oath. Archilochus writes
venomous iambics against Lycambes and his daughters who commit suicide out of shame.
Because obscene, base, and potentially murderous subject matter were apparently ubiquitous in
the poetry of Archilochus, he developed a reputation for being a lewd, slanderous, dangerous
poet. The negative reception of Archilochus’ poetry was more prevalent than the positive one
based on the quantity of negative testimonies to Archilochus and his reputation as an iambic
poet.1 A comparison of citations of Archilochus to fragments of his poetry which survive in papyri
suggest that citations of Archilochus misrepresent his work. He wrote in the genre of blame
poetry using poetic devices to make his rebukes an art form rather than pure slander. Above all,
he was not merely an iambic poet; some of his poetry is martial in content.
Archilochus was noteworthy for his innovations in and ‘refinement’ of different meters. In
contrast to the conventions of later poetry, Archilochus’ meter does not restrict his subject
matter. His tetrameters can be ‘iambic’ in nature. His iambic trimeter does not have to be
invective. Thus, when looking at fragments of Archilochus’ work in iambic trimeter (or any other
meter), it is necessary to keep in mind that meter does not necessarily correspond with subject
matter or poetic genre ... Chapter 1 of this paper looks at the negative attitudes toward Archilochus and his poetry
through the lens of Plato’s Republic ... Chapter 2 presents the opposing opinion expressed in the testimonies to Archilochus in a
similar way to Chapter 1 ... Chapter 3 examines the corpus of Archilochus as fragments in order to support the
interpretation of Archilochus’ style and content offered in the first chapter.
