“lyric” to refer to them, many of the small-scale, non-hexameter poems of the Archaic Period were
accompanied not by a lyre but by an oboe-like reed instrument called an AULOS, and the thoughts and
feelings poured out by the poet may have been just as conventional and contrived as the elaborate metrical
conventions in which they were expressed.
AULOS An oboe-like reed instrument, used as an accompaniment for sacrificial ritual, certain
athletic activities, ELEGIAC poetry, and the advance of HOPLITES into battle (figures 27 and 28).This is not to say that the poetry of the Archaic Period was somehow lacking in “sincerity” or
“authenticity,” merely that the metrical and musical form in which it was composed dictated what kinds of
thoughts and feelings were expressed, in the same way that, in more recent times, blues or hip hop can be
expected to embrace certain types of content and to exclude others. One type of poetry, for example, is
that known as IAMBIC, which was composed in iambic (and related) meters and is often satiric in nature
and direct, even coarse, in expression. It is conventional for the iambic poet to express strong personal
feelings and to use his verse to attack those whom he portrays as his enemies. The greatest exponent of
iambic verse was the poet Archilochus, who lived in the middle of the seventh century BC. He was
revered in antiquity as a poet whose skill was on a level with that of Hesiod and Homer. Unfortunately,
we do not have the opportunity to assess that judgment because all that survives of Archilochus’ works
are scraps and fragments, lines here and there quoted by much later Greek authors or bits of PAPYRUS
that have been preserved by chance in the sands of Egypt. Some of those brief fragments give us a taste of
the pugnacious character for which his iambic verse was famous. For example, Athenaeus, writing in
about AD 200, quotes Archilochus as saying in one of his poems, “the way someone thirsts for a drink,
that’s how I crave a fight with you.” That is the extent of the quotation, nor do we know whom
Archilochus was addressing. In another fragment, found in the writings of Theophilus of Antioch, a
Christian contemporary of Athenaeus, Archilochus boasts (in Martin West’s translation)
IAMBIC Referring to a metrical form that was considered to approximate to the rhythm of ordinary
speech, generally used in the Archaic Period for invective and satire, but later also used for epigram
and other serious purposes, including the dialogue of drama.PAPYRUS A marsh plant native to Egypt; also, the sheets used as a writing surface made by laying
thin strips of the stem of the papyrus plant side by side, with another layer of similar strips crossing
them, and usually a third layer again parallel to the first, the whole being then soaked in water,
pressed together, and dried (figures 26 and 82).I do have one good skill,
that’s to repay whoever hurts me with a corresponding ill.In this way, Archilochus assimilates himself to the prickly hedgehog, of whom he elsewhere says, “while
the fox has many, the hedgehog has one good skill.”
Another writer of iambic verse is Archilochus’ near-contemporary, Semonides. He appears to have been
a more bland and less interesting poet than Archilochus, but at least we have a continuous quotation of
respectable length from one of his iambic poems. The quotation is over one hundred lines long and may,
in fact, constitute a complete, or nearly complete, poem. In it, Semonides classifies womankind according