Sappho and Lyric Poetry General There is a great deal of flexibility in early Greek poetry but modern scholars and some ancient commentators have found it useful to divide it into various categories, based on typical features: Iambi , a term first found in Archilochus fragment , (Ken Hope's web-page), where they are associated with jollity, were probably spoken or chanted. They are associated with a limping 'iambic' rhythm [di da di da di da], sexual exuberance, the adoption of a specific often coarse or vulgar character or persona (cook, peasant, robber), and in particular with vituperation cf. Simonides (Diotima). They may have originated in ritual abuse, found in scapegoat ( pharmakos ) festivals such as Apollo's Thargelia (big in Hipponax's Ephesus) , and in the cults (important in Archilochus's Paros) of Demeter, who was said to have been cheered up during her search for Persephone by one Iambe (link to Perseus, Homeric Hymn to Demeter) . Iambic rhythm can also be used for more serious poetry, even philosophy, and it designates the spoken parts of Attic drama. Typical of the genre for his apparent vicious ribaldry and parodic sarcasm is Hipponax; here is fragment 128 (West): `Tell me, muse, of that Eurymedontian Charybdis of the deep, she who swallows whole [literally: 'knife-stomach', i.e. keeps the cutting for her stomach?], who eats in no kind of order. Tell how he'll die an awful death by stoning, by the people's decree, by the shore of the unharvested sea.' and a rather free translation of another fragment (possibly by Archilochus instead?) found on papyrus (Hipponax, 115, ll.5-9.): 'May the good-natured Thracians capture him naked in Salmydessus, the long-haired, high-haired Thracians, then he will enjoy life to the full, a life of many troubles and pains, a life fed on bread of slaves' - you get the general idea. S | |
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