Hipponax

Homeric chivalry has given way to an oriental suspicion of woman and dislike of her influence.

The tone of Hipponax of Ephesus, Floret circa 540, is equally peevish and misogynistic.

he is the reputed inventor of the coliambic or lame iambic metre an ugly form of verse used later in mimes and fables one quotation will show his character when is a wife her husband's joy but twice the day she weds him and the day she dies of ionian love poets mimnermus of smyrna florid circa six thirty and anacreon of teos florid circa five forty were the most notable mimnermus used the elegiac metre and became the model for the amatory elegies of alexandria and rome anacreon was a lyrist both are unromantic selfish voluptuaries memnermus soon wearies of life he pities the sun for being obliged all day long his course to run and prays for a painless death at sixty anacreon lived at the court of polycrates prince of samos and with other tyrants and enjoyed favor and ease till his death at the age of eighty-five in him the degeneracy of the ionian race now unwarlike and fond only of wine and pleasure found poetical expression his verses of which few survive were much read and imitated in later antiquity among the dorians poetry had a definite place in public as well as in religious life choral singing was an important subject in the education of both sexes the strains of the flute led the spartan armies into battle and their marching songs were famous it is not surprising that the spartans a nation of soldiers should have borrowed most of their poets from other states we first hear of terpander of lesbos who made some great improvement in stringed instruments as well as in lyric metre his compositions which only free spartans might sing were typical of the stately unadorned archaic style Tertius, florid circa 640 BC, is said to have been a lame Athenian schoolmaster, sent to Sparta in obedience to an oracle.

Sparta was at war with Messenia, and the royal house dreaded a revolution.

Homeric chivalry has given way to an oriental suspicion of woman and dislike of her influence.

The tone of Hipponax of Ephesus, Floret circa 540, is equally peevish and misogynistic.

he is the reputed inventor of the coliambic or lame iambic metre an ugly form of verse used later in mimes and fables one quotation will show his character when is a wife her husband's joy but twice the day she weds him and the day she dies of ionian love poets mimnermus of smyrna florid circa six thirty and anacreon of teos florid circa five forty were the most notable mimnermus used the elegiac metre and became the model for the amatory elegies of alexandria and rome anacreon was a lyrist both are unromantic selfish voluptuaries memnermus soon wearies of life he pities the sun for being obliged all day long his course to run and prays for a painless death at sixty anacreon lived at the court of polycrates prince of samos and with other tyrants and enjoyed favor and ease till his death at the age of eighty-five in him the degeneracy of the ionian race now unwarlike and fond only of wine and pleasure found poetical expression his verses of which few survive were much read and imitated in later antiquity among the dorians poetry had a definite place in public as well as in religious life choral singing was an important subject in the education of both sexes the strains of the flute led the spartan armies into battle and their marching songs were famous it is not surprising that the spartans a nation of soldiers should have borrowed most of their poets from other states we first hear of terpander of lesbos who made some great improvement in stringed instruments as well as in lyric metre his compositions which only free spartans might sing were typical of the stately unadorned archaic style Tertius, floret circa 640 BC, is said to have been a lame Athenian schoolmaster, sent to Sparta in obedience to an oracle.

Sparta was at war with Messenia, and the royal house dreaded a revolution.

But there seems little doubt that in this period literature was definitely used for the first time to degrade the position of women.

The iambic meter was invented for the express purpose of satirical calumny, and the three chief iambic poets of the Alexandrian canon, Archilochus, Simonides, and Hipponax, in their scanty fragments all agree on one point, the chief object of their lampoons is woman.

At the beginning of this period the two sexes are fairly equal in their opportunities.

At the end, the female is plainly the inferior.

The same piece of stuff, so excellent was the workmanship, often serving for coat, blanket, and shroud.

It is obvious, then, that an idle wife, if such a thing existed, or a wife who ate more than her share of the laboriously prepared bread, would be a great grief to her lord and master, who was himself too busy with the higher work of politics to attend to such things, and that the machinery of the household would be put very much out of gear.

It may well be that Simonides was unfortunate in his choice of a helpmate, for as Hipponax, the third of this company, mournfully complains, it is hard to get a wife who will both bring you a good dowry and then do all the work.

Hipponax, if we may judge him by some forty short fragments, was a thoroughly disagreeable person.

Hence it was that the very name of so precious a vegetable came to be held in estimation, until it was customary to say, that if it were permitted to blaspheme without offending the gods, it would be by mention of the Rhodian cabbage.

The lover, in a fragment of the lost poet Ananias, invokes it solemnly in evidence of his attachment, and there is found a suggestion in the iambics of Hipponax of the vegetable having even entered into the mythology.

He, falling down, worshipped the seven-leaved cabbage, to which, before she drank the poisoned draft, Pandora brought a cake at Targelia.

This oath by the cabbage became in time the favorite expletive of Ionia, and having winged its way westwards, still lingers in the shape of the exclamation, cavolo, as a popular phrase of modern Italy.