HIPPONAX

A Greek iambic poet of Ephesus, who about 540 B.C. was banished to Clazamenae by Atenagoras and Comas, tyrants of his native city. At Clazomenae, two sculptors, Bupalus and Athenis, made the little, thin, ugly poet ridiculous in caricature, who avenged himself in such bitter iambic verses that, like Lycambes and his daughter, who were persecuted by Archilochus, they hanged themselves. The burlesque character of the poems which he composed in the Ionic dialect found an appropriate form in his favourite metre, which was probably invented by himself. This metre is known as the Choliambus ("the halting iambus"), or the Scazon (lit. "limping"), from its having a spondee or trochee in the last place, instead of the usual iambic foot. He is also supposed to have been the first to produce parodies of epic poetry. Of his poems we have only a few fragments.