CUP (2026) h/b 320pp £40 (ISBN 9781009502252)
The origins of this book lie in a colloquium held at Oxford in summer 2016: the decade-long delay before the publication of this book—with nine contributions from the original participants and three subsequent contributions—has been well worth the wait. Readers may find it helpful to have Douglas Gerber’s Loeb of Greek Iambic Poetry (1999) at hand: it includes not only the surviving 183 fragments of Hipponax (there is no complete poem), but also Archilochus and Semonides. What follows is of necessity no more than a precis of a few of the major issues discussed.
The opening chapter by the book’s editors, (roughly twice as long as all but one of the others and entitled 'The Limping Muse: Hipponax the Poet') is outstanding. Of the man himself, little can be said with certainty or near-certainty, except, indeed, that his floruit was in the mid-sixth century BC. Probably born in Ephesus, possibly exiled, to Klazomenai (near today’s Izmir), he may have engaged in a long feud against a shadowy sculptor named Bupalus (whose own existence has been questioned; he is considered at length here, pp.23–26, and also in chapter 9); H. is mentioned twice by Aristophanes. Of course, he is well known for his metrical innovation of the 'limping iambus' (scazon or choliambus), with its spondee in the last foot of the iambic trimeter, and described by Martin West as 'a kind of deliberate metrical ribaldry'. Of the man we learn anecdotally that he was ugly and skinny, but strong, with a good 'throwing arm'—like Odysseus in Od. 8.158ff. But we also see, as C. and P. put it, 'the relentless coarseness, the near-complete absence of moral outlook, the ostentatious self-debasement of the poet’s own character': indeed, is 'poet' the mot juste for a man whom we see 'brawl, curse, whinge, insult, threaten, boast, utter ridiculous prayers, defecate, copulate and undergo a highly unorthodox treatment for impotence'? Of H.’s language, 'the dialect is fundamentally Ionian', but at least 64 hapax legomena are found, and foreign words abound, the Lydian παλμύς (sultan) notable among them; πυγιστί ('Arsish' from Lydian—so Gerber, but see Silk later—'is one of the earliest references to bilingualism in the Greek record'). C. and P. give us an adequate but not excessive idea of the faecal and sexual material which appear to predominate in Hipponax’s output—but how H. disseminates it (recitations? symposia? at festivals?) remains to be considered in later chapters: after all, H. will have needed the wherewithal to clothe, feed and house himself.
C. and P. note the utter lack of ethical parameters and self-justification on H.’s part—which yet goes with 'highly poetic sophistication and linguistic creativity', 'creating some of the most striking poetry to survive, albeit in tatters, from Greek antiquity': qualities which do not shine through to the reviewer as he re-reads those 'tatters'.
Chapter 2 ('From Ritual to Indecent Symposion: Contextualising Hipponax'). Carmine Catenacci observes that Hipponax’s verses 'abound with direct references to rituals', while his 'poetry is interwoven with first-person stories'. Where do these strands cohabit and interact? Answer: the symposium, in relation to which Catenacci finds Rotstein’s definition of iambos, i.e. 'performance framed by ritual' 'useful' [Rotstein’s The Idea of Iambos (2010) was reviewed for Classics for All on publication]. She here brings in the visual evidence of vase painting (pp. 54–5 for illustrations of a sixth-century black-figure vase which 'impudently violates public decency'): for Catenacci, 'indecent' symposia are not a universal key to comprehending H.’s poetry, but they help us to understand at least some of the elements present in it', and 'of these 'indecent' symposia at the end of archaism, H. appears to be the refined and brilliant poetic voice'.
In Chapter 3—'The Black Cat in the Dark'—Margarita Alexandrou’s 'Performance(s) of Hipponactean Iambos'—the author aims to make a 'more precise appraisal of the social and cultural role of one of the most scurrilous and controversial genres of Greek literary history'. She identifies seven categories of poems in the fragments of H.’s poetry, four in scazons with the rest being poems in other forms. She then quotes extensively from the fragments (with translations)—(1) Narratives in scazons, (2) poems in scazons without a narrative element, (3) poems in the style of prayers or hymns, (4) free-standing mythic narratives, (5) 'epodes' (serious poetry, overlapping with lyric themes, with a sympotic audience and elaborate performance), (6) possibly a parodic poem, i.e. 4 hexameters, quoted in full, (7) fragments consisting of a single tetrameter. The arguments are carefully presented, and Alexandrou concludes that it is likely 'H.’s poetry was performed at symposia as well as beyond'. She also asks—without any attempt to answer—whether a bookish poet might even have been producing poetry that would be eligible for future bookish audiences. After all, Callimachus (remarkably) claims Hipponax’s poetry as his model.
Chapter 4: 'Hipponax and the Thargelia' (a festival held, roughly, in May), by Shane Hawkins, is densely argued, with over 60 footnotes, not a few of daunting length; the question of the social context of iambic performance and its possible connections to ritual has been a 'recurrent topic of scholarly discussion': a footnote references a dozen separate scholars, and later even Casaubon is called upon. 'The story of the lekythos' (writes Hawkins), 'the connections between the discus and the Thargelia and the use of a Lydian word for a discus are part of a nexus of ideas in H.’s poetry that includes festivals, throwing games, poverty and hunger and pharmakos (scapegoat) ritual' (the second alpha of pharmakos (φαρμακός) in ritual is normally scanned long).
Chapter 5. Adrian Kelly’s subject is Homer and Hipponax—two names which one can hardly expect to see linked. 'The trend in recent scholarship sees the iambist consciously and deliberately transforming Homeric epic in intricate and sophisticated ways.' But Kelly concludes that 'it cannot be proven that Hipponax was not deploying specifically Homeric intertexts' (as often assumed by modern scholars), but in this chapter, 'he has tried to demonstrate that this generally accepted opinion proceeds from flawed premises and rests on faulty bases'. Your reviewer, on the evidence fairly presented here, finds himself in Kelly’s camp. (The chapter was dedicated to the late Martin West; it is a very great pity that we can no longer seek his authoritative opinions.)
Chapter 6: Hipponax’s 'Iambic Persona and the Protean Art of Begging'. Andrea Capra 'attempts a fresh reading of Hipponax’s famous prayer to Hermes (fragments 32, 34, 36 are given in full, with translations) with a number of fragments that are close to it'. Capra covers four points: the influence of the poems on Aristophanes; how the appropriation of the poems helps to tackle a most notorious puzzle; the unravelling of unnoticed comic overtones in the poet’s request for a cloak; and finally she tries to reconstruct the persona adopted by the poet via Aristophanes and Plutarch. She will thus ultimately shed light on the mystery that surrounds his poetic persona. Capra pursues the cases for these endeavours with detailed and (to the reviewer) convincing evidence: she concludes by proposing that Hipponax, perhaps in a sympotic context, adopted the persona of a persistent beggar/petitioner who must untiringly repeat his requests with a number of self-conscious variations, affecting both vocabulary, figures of sound, and metre. Capra suggests that we also see revealed on the poet’s part 'an impressive awareness of the potentiality of language as such'. If Capra’s arguments 'gain traction', there may well be implications for the arrangement and sequence of the fragments, so that 'the reader can appreciate the beggar’s changing strategies'.
7. 'Candaules the Dog Throttler: Graeco-Lydian Onomastics and the Poetics of Iambos' Hipponax Fr.3a West in Context.' In this chapter, Alexander Dale dismisses some of the (fanciful) interpretations of the word Kandaules in favour of the historical figure who was the last king of the Heraclid dynasty at Sardis. But whence 'Dog-Throttler'? In a highly technical section of his paper, Dale shows that modern scholarship has concocted a non-existent deity (knowledge of Anatolian, Luwian, Lydian seems not to help). In the real world, Herodotus, Nikolaos of Damascus, and Xanthos of Lydia are the 'principal sources', plus the Gyges drama (Plato, Republic (book 2), with Gyges an unimportant figure, possibly in Kandaules’ retinue: then follows the familiar myth (relevant is note 27 with full scholarly documentation). 'The accounts of Kandaules and Gyges form a threshold between myth and history', as Dale justly observes. (Dale then devotes a little space to explicating the luxury dish or dishes named κάνδαυλος.)
In the remainder of this lively contribution, we find Hermes the dog-throttler (who keeps the thief safe from the barking dog), analysis of the word πανδάλητος (ruined and completely f-d, thanks to the homophony between δαυλῆς and δαλῆς), and we have a pun, complex yet not overly abstruse, born out of the 'complex ethno-linguistic milieu of sixth-century Asia Minor, the associative nexus between the mythical dynast Kandaules and the dish that bore his name'. (The reviewer suggests that this section, convincingly argued as it is, is best read as a whole: it does not lend itself to precis.) It remains to mention 'Ionian iambos', an important precursor to Attic comedy, but one which, despite its contribution to the humour of H., 'has been obscured by the linguistic and textual difficulties posed by the fragments'; rather, says Dale, 'iambos in the hands of a masterful poet like Hipponax could rival any of the genres of archaic song in its artistry and craftmanship'. But the 'question of Old Comedy’s debt to Ionian iambos is much debated'.
8. 'Self-Naming in Hipponax' is the subject of Daniel Anderson’s contribution—and the answer to this question, if question it be, seems to be given at once by Callimachus, Iamb 1.1 ('Listen to Hipponax, for here I am')—the validity of which is disputed by no less a scholar than R. Pfeiffer (note 4). However, H. names himself more often than any other Archaic poet—but C. Carey points out that H.’s use of the third person has the effect of highlighting the divide between author and persona, lightening the tone with irony. Anderson goes on to consider other moments of authorial self-naming in the Archaic period—along with other scholars such as Wilamowitz (on Theognis), Lloyd-Jones, and Martin West, who attacks the belief of the relevance of the σφραγίς in a frankly enjoyable note 13 on p.171; see also the lengthy note 17. We note that self-naming in Hipponax is never clearly 'metaleptic' (note 21), rather it is a feature of the character Hipponax, not the author or authorial persona. Alcman, at PMGF 17, names himself in the third person—with narrative authority, but also with a self-disparaging tone, describing himself as a παμφάγος, surely glutton rather than gourmand. Hipponax is freely self-referential—with the name spoken by the character Hipponax in direct speech, recalled by the impersonal narrator and self-naming, but a different character Hipponax when miming the voice of a third party (fr. 36 W), in that case Ploutos, god of Wealth. Anderson brings in Hesiod (his encounter with the Muses), Archilochus’ Glaucus, and Theognis’ famous Cyrnus (mentioned so often that any imitator would naturally bring him in): H.’s self-consciousness was, it is suggested, one of the central reasons for his appropriation by Callimachus. Anderson closes: 'self-naming in Hipponax makes for a playful distance, a play of distances between author, narrator and the character Hipponax acting out a series of vignettes'. But is it permissible to wonder whether H. saw himself in quite those ways?
(Metalepsis: when a work of fiction points to, refigures, or temporarily dissolves the boundary between art and life.)
9. 'Hipponax versus Boupalus: Verbal versus visual art'. Deborah Boedeker concludes her interesting contribution with the observation that H. 'excoriates many individuals in many different professions', listing a dozen ways H.’s verbal activity is employed: Bupalos is identified as a sculptor (in Pliny) rather than, as often, a painter. Incidentally, when a phrase is translated as 'telling Bupalos to howl', κλαίειν, does not this mean usually and colloquially 'to bugger off and bad luck to you'? Elsewhere H. says that he will 'punch Bupalos in the eye'—but, in any case, was Bupalos a fictional creation of Hipponax, as Hedreen has argued? There is no doubt that H. had a gift for invective, nowhere more succinct than where (in Martin West’s translation), someone is an 'interprandial pooper'. For the reviewer, lively and enjoyable as the chapter was to read, the fragments, while depicting the low life for which H. was renowned, leave some unanswered and unanswerable questions. (Is it perhaps worth noting that Philip of Thessalonica clearly believed in the reality of Boupalos? (AP.7 405).
10. Douglas Olson’s chapter—'Dirty Words in Hipponax'—has no shortage of material to go on: but it also has more to say. When Jeffrey Henderson’s The Maculate Muse appeared in 1991 (2nd edition) it received criticism as well as a welcome for tackling a taboo subject. Now Olson argues that many of Henderson’s analyses of individual words and passages ought to be 'reconsidered'. Is Athenian Old Comedy and the iambic tradition more closely allied than the primary evidence itself suggests? (Olson, of course, is a noted editor of Aristophanes). This review will not go into detail where obscenities are listed: Olson’s lists include 'all the items in Henderson’s catalogue of alleged obscenities in Hipponax', which are as follows: (1) Standard Anatomical Terms (7 headings); (2) Figurative Anatomical Terms (12 headings); (3) Terms for Sexual Acts (3 headings) and Actors (7 headings); Other Sexual or Corporal Practices (8 headings). 'There is no evidence of either cunnilingus or voyeurism in the fragments, and only one clear reference to fellatio.' Olson repeats his doubts about a close 'genetic' relationship between iambos and Attic comedy. (I noted perhaps a dozen places where Olson either sharply disagrees with Henderson’s interpretations or at least indicates doubt.)
11. 'Hipponax, Iambic Laughter and the Questions of Genre' is the topic of Ralph Rosen’s chapter (Rosen has 14 entries, including one forthcoming, in this book’s Bibliography). 'If not all iambic poems were considered iamboi, how legitimate is it to consider all iamboi a ''genre'' '? asks I. Kantzios in The Trajectory of Archaic Greek Trimeters (2005) (note 8 in Rosen’s contribution). Iambos is a slithery concept (but invective was the 'outstanding feature of the genre' (M. West). The trouble is that the leading three iambographers (Archilochus, Hipponax, and Semonides) composed satire and invective that were not always iambic, and iambic poetry that was not always satirical. However, the poems that ancient authors tended to refer to as iambos were largely 'comedic' (more conceptual and abstract than 'comic'); for Rotstein, drawing on the work of Dover, West and five other scholars, iamboi may refer to an 'occasion of ritualised commensality or conviviality' (though the source, Tzetzes citing Archilochus, is hardly definitive, and Rotstein goes no further than referring to 'poetic output compatible with that type of occasion'. Rosen concludes this chapter (which had the incidental merit of sending the reviewer back to Rotstein’s admirable book) by observing that 'by restoring the comedic and its goal of arousing laughter as a central element in our conceptualization of iambos, we come closer to a more stable understanding of what iambos actually meant to poets and audiences across antiquity', though 'we hardly need the intervention of scholars to alert us to the existence of comedy in Hipponax’s poetry'. [I have deliberately omitted any consideration of the 'Hermeneutic circle'!]
12. In the final chapter, 'Poetry and Anti-poetry, Hipponax in Perspective', Michael Silk offers a 'new account of Hipponax’s distinctive features'. Silk does not hold back; 'H.’s idiom is transgressive ugly, violent and marginal … an admixture, but also some prosodic eccentricities' (he adduces φαρμακός, with the second alpha lengthened—but where there is any hint of ritual, is that not the usual scansion?). Again, he corrects Gerber’s 'Arsish' from the Lydian πυγιστί, as incorrect—it should be 'backsideish'—yes, but which word would Hipponax have chosen? Silk’s broad sweep takes in Virgil, Villon, whom Silk considers at some length, D.H. Lawrence, Hemingway and T. S. Eliot, as well as, interestingly, and again at considerable length, Benjamin Zephaniah, previously notus mihi nomine tantum. He had earlier commented that his example from Eliot ('Sweeney Among the Nightingales') shows that 'superficial similarities with Hipponax may well count for very little as soon as pressed'—whereas Zephaniah is repudiating an 'attenuated tradition', just as Hipponax was alienated from an attenuated tradition: Hipponax projected 'not just marginality and rejection but also the contemporary inconsequentiality of established tradition'; he is 'all in, all of' the present—like the 'earlier Zephaniah'.
Nothing is known about the death of Hipponax, though Theocritus composed (of course in verse) a mock epitaph for his grave.
Over 25 pages of Bibliography follow, as well as an Index Locorum and a General Index. The book’s contributors have dealt comprehensively—and generously—with the work of a poet whose surviving output amounts to only 180 or so fragments. This book, the offspring of a colloquium, deserves to receive even more scholarly attention than its contents already provide.
Colin Leach