SOURCE: “The Fate of the Lycambids,” in Archilochus of Paros, Noyes Press, 1977, pp. 47-56.

[In the following essay, Rankin investigates the merits of the tradition that the Lycambid family members were driven to suicide over attacks on them in verse by Archilochus.]

There is a tradition, widespread in the first few centuries of our era, that Archilochus killed Lycambes and his daughters by means of his satires. The motive attributed to him was revenge for his rejection as a suitor of Neoboule. Various versions agree that his words drove the family to suicide, and that their method of self-destruction was hanging. Horace is our earliest authority for this catastrophic event, and he mentions Archilochus' revenge four times,¹ referring obliquely but surely to the means whereby Neoboule made away with herself,² and he speaks of Archilochus' words ‘hunting’ or ‘driving’ Lycambes.³ Scholiasts fill out Horace's allusions with detail which clearly is drawn from a general tradition. Ovid shows himself acquainted with the story, including its suicidal aspect; and he speaks of Archilochus' poetic weapons being dyed with ‘Lycambean blood’.⁴ We cannot use this as indicating that Lycambes was a separate victim apart from his daughters; for the adjective is capable of a general, familial connotation, and the reference is of a vague allusive kind.

Ovid's remarks are supplemented by various scholiastic comments, some of them so imaginatively illogical as to give comfort to sceptics about the whole tradition by their very coexistence with the more frequently occurring elements of the story.⁵ Martial echoes Ovid's phrase about ‘Lycambean blood’. There are a number of treatments of the theme in the Greek Anthology, most of which concern the pathetic fate of the two daughters⁶ who are victims of that species of poetic fury which Horace disclaims in himself,⁷ glad though he is to acknowledge his imitation of Archilochus' poetic and metrical forms exclusive of their ferocious contents.

The poets of the Anthology who mention the affair include Dioskorides, whose poem in which the girls defend their honourable reputation against Archilochus' slurs is important in discussions of this theme.⁸ Oenomaus finds it strange that Apollo should so enthusiastically give his patronage to an abusive and disreputable character like Archilochus, who, amongst other misdeeds, pours ridicule upon women who refuse him marriage.⁹ I take it that Oenomaus plural ‘women’ is a general reference to Neoboule rather than an actual plurality, although it remains possible that the poet courted others.¹⁰ Also, the emperor Julian forbade priests to read Archilochus.¹¹ No doubt he feared that the poet's outrageous works might injure the repute of the reformed paganism which he essayed; and he may well have had in mind the avoidance of the kind of criticism of Archilochus which we find in the philosopher Oenomaus. But it is clear that he knew Archilochus' works thoroughly, and that they were available to read in his time.¹² From a fragment of his letters, it is evident that he believed Archilochus to have spoken falsehoods against Lycambes.¹³

Horace and these others evidently derive support for their remarks from Archilochus' poetry itself, and not merely from a parallel tradition, though such no doubt existed. Certainly the Lycambids were important in Archilochus' life and consciousness: as we have seen, there are comparatively numerous references to them even in the scattered fragments of his work that survive.¹⁴ Even if we allow a certain preference for scandalous material on the part of those who quote and preserve his words on the subject, this in itself indicates the striking and prominent character of his references to Lycambes and his family as well as the general currency of the story.¹⁵

The Lycambidae were an actual family of Paros, and probably of some importance in the politics of the island.¹⁶ They are not merely concocted extrapolations from the poems or simple accretions by a mythopoeic process like that which represents Sappho in love with Phaon;¹⁷ or the notion, which had considerable comic possibilities, and was used (indeed possibly invented) by poets of Athenian comedy, that Archilochus and Hipponax were both lovers of Sappho.¹⁸ Without discounting the element of popular fantasy that no doubt influences the story as we have it, it is reasonable to believe that we are dealing with a version or versions of some real events, at least until evidence is forthcoming to disprove this. I agree with G. W. Bond's view that the onus of proof lies upon those¹⁹ who reject completely the tradition about the Lycambids. The story fits well with the references to the Lycambids which survive and, though not one of these unquestionably refers to the event, it is sufficient that the fragments refer with criticism, hostility and opprobrium to members of the family. Nor need we be surprised not to find it included in the inscription together with the hagiographically respectable story of the Muses and the cow. If the Cologne fragment is genuine,²⁰ it contributes important evidence to our attempts at reconstructing the armoury of weapons used against Lycambes and his daughters; for the poem is of such a character that would make it difficult, if it gained popular currency, for a family to continue an honoured and self-respecting life on a small island. Thus there is something to be said in favour of an attempt to look once more at the story; for if it is true, it represents Archilochus' most ruthless achievement and one which is unique in our records of Greek life and experience.

Horace's authority as a self-confessed student of Archilochus and his reputation as a man of acknowledged good sense cannot easily be disregarded. If we had nothing but his allusions to the story together with our present fragments of the poet, we would still be obliged to consider the question seriously. As it is, the tradition which fans out from Horace's time provides still stronger support for it. Evidence for its availability before Horace is much slighter, and nowhere entirely unequivocal. In the fifth century b.c. Cratinus … indicates that the poet could expect his audience to know who Lycambes was. This might suggest that they knew, or might be expected to know, something about the bad relationship between Archilochus and Lycambes, knowledge which they would obtain from his poems or a contemporary tradition associated with them and his name. This ‘fragment’ does not entitle us to infer that the story of the suicides was known in fifth century Athens; but we cannot be sure that it was not.

Critias is said not to have known of it either;²¹ otherwise he could hardly have failed to include a mention of the Lycambids amongst his hostile comments on Archilochus. … We cannot tell whether Critias knew of the Lycambids or not, since he confines his comments about Archilochus' sexual life to these three disobliging words, and from the way in which the passage of his prose runs, it seems probable that he decided not to go into more detail, or did not have any more detail to produce.²² Critias' chosen ‘brief’ was to point out that the poet was in the habit of revealing discreditable facts about himself in his poetry. Archilochus' attacks upon the Lycambids would not fall into this category (apart from their possible inclusion in the insults mentioned above), for in his assault upon them Archilochus shows himself to be a terrifyingly effective defender of his own honour; and Critias would not wish to represent him in this role. However, it must be conceded that Critias gives us no reason to believe that he was especially interested in the matter.

If we recall Alcidamas' remark that the Parians honoured Archilochus although he was [blásphiemos] we may be provided with a clue to the source of the tradition about Lycambes and his daughters. Archilochus' memory was revered by the later generations of his countrymen, as is evidenced by the Archilocheion and its associated inscriptions. But the inscription²³ tells us that Archilochus was banished by his contemporary Parians for being excessively abusive; it is possible this alludes to attacks upon an important family of the island which had tragic consequences for some of its members.

This does not exclude the possibility that Archilochus' conflict with the Lycambid family had political overtones which are lost beneath the personal emphasis of the tradition associated with Archilochus' subsequent cult. The tendency of Alcidamas' brief comment and the evidence about the poet's temporary banishment from Paros suggest that the Lycambid story, with other details of his life, may be of distinctly Parian origin, and may not have become widely known outside the island in the fifth century b.c. In the fourth century b.c. Alcidamas possibly has heard something of it; and for the third century b.c. a papyrus poem provides our first discernible testimony about the suicides.²⁴

We do not know whether Archilochus actually wished to kill Lycambes and his daughters. We do not know what his particular intentions were, but there is no doubt that he gave this family warning that he knew how to hurt those who injured him.²⁵ He also knew how to wield poetic curses, but the surviving examples of his art in this sphere are probably not directed against Lycambes and his family.²⁶ The ‘Strasbourg’ epode, which is generally accepted as being genuinely his work, contains a powerful curse;²⁷ and if we can accept the idea that there is a close relationship between Horace's Epodes and the epodes of Archilochus without committing ourselves entirely to M. Lasserre's interesting theory of a precise correspondence between the two sets of poems,²⁸ we may observe that curses are not infrequent in Horace's book; perhaps we may also infer a correlative frequency for them in Archilochus' epodes.

One fragment of the poet has been interpreted as referring to the self-destruction of this family: … ‘hanging [?] they spewed out all their arrogant pride’.²⁹ The use of the verb κυπτειν to signify ‘hanging’ (i.e. by a rope so as to cause death) is authenticated only by a late interpretation³⁰ which itself may be influenced by the tradition of the Lycambids' suicide. It may be an attempt to read the story of their self-destruction into a text where it has no place; since the verb could more easily mean ‘hanging their heads in shame’.³¹ The masculine plural of the aorist participle … shows that the group to which it refers could have a masculine element in it, since the masculine can be used to designate a group of both genders. If these words refer to the Lycambid daughters, they must also include Lycambes himself. There is no reason to suppose that Archilochus' fragment which echoes the Homeric sentiment that ‘it is not righteous to quarrel with the dead’ necessarily indicates his unwillingness to gloat over the death of those who had dishonoured him.³² Even Achilles abused the dead Hector, and in any case, the context of this fragment is lost and we have no idea of its purpose. However, all that we can properly deduce from the … fragment is the likelihood that Archilochus observed, noted (or even perhaps hopefully anticipated) some effects, deadly or otherwise, of his poetic campaign against Lycambes and his family.

I suggest that the traditional story is too strongly established to be laughed off as a piece of mythopeia at folk level, or as an invention of comic poets in Athens, and that probably Lycambes and his daughters did commit suicide. The other point upon which the tradition hinges seems assured: namely that Archilochus attacked them in his verse.³³ Archilochus attacked them; and they, sooner or later afterwards, committed suicide. What is the real connection between these two propositions which the tradition regards as cause and effect?

Let us look first at the theory, supported by the analogy of Irish and Arabic satirists' alleged powers, that it was by some magical operation, some spell, that Archilochus brought his victims to suicide.³⁴ It would be understandable enough if such a view of his powers prevailed on his native island of Paros in the folk-tradition: it was the centre of his hero-cult, and he seems to have been regarded there as a kind of ‘holy man’, who had a special relationship with the gods.³⁵ His bitter tongue earned him exile, as we are told in the inscription; but it was the oracle of the god Apollo that secured his recall,³⁶ and it was the god Dionysus who inflicted the males of Paros with impotence for having sent him away.³⁷ This would appear to be a fertile ground for legends of his ‘magic’ powers as a satirist to take root, but in fact we have no specific account of how this vengeful power was supposed to operate. Its ‘mechanics’ are quite obscure to us, and as far as his own attitude is concerned, we simply have the evidence of his warning verses that told how he could hurt his enemies, and the poetic curses which we have mentioned. Even these may be claims in which he himself wished to believe, rather than confident assertions of his powers; they may be the whistlings in the dark of a man who feels wronged, but who is powerless to obtain his rights; mere fantasies of supernatural ability; the delusions of grandeur with which a loser sought to comfort his isolation and poverty.³⁸ Or else it is a question of a poet who, as Piccolomini soberly put it in 1883, naturally wishes to increase the influence and power of his profession, and speaks accordingly.³⁹

Poetic abusiveness no doubt had its representatives before Archilochus, although we can name no examples. The ceremony of outrageous insult and flyting is perhaps to be seen, in some traces at least, in the Homeric poems. Achilles insults Agamemnon; Agamemnon insults Achilles and Calchas; we hear Paris being heaped with insults, almost in a ritual manner, by Hector: … ‘Foul Paris, fairest in form, woman-crazy, talker of nonsense’,⁴⁰ has the ring of some possible predecessor of Archilochus in the art of poetic abuse; and it also has a repetitive, emphatic character that is not unreminiscent of a magical spell.⁴¹ But there is no indication that any magic was intended, either in Homer, or in Hesiod, with his obsessive abuse of the judges whom he nominates as ‘bribe-devouring’,⁴² nor indeed as far as we can see, in Archilochus.

But the analogy of the powers of Irish and Arabian satirists has been put forward to explain how Archilochus drove his enemy and his two daughters to their death. And so, before we go further, we had better consider this suggestion, confining ourselves to the Irish parallel, which involves a community of substantially Indo-European character, like that of Greece. The common lore from at least the sixteenth century onwards,⁴³ had it that Irish bards could ‘rhyme rats to death’.⁴⁴ Little detail is known about this procedure, although the last recorded instance of it relates to the eighteenth century. A poetic ‘spell’ or satire seems to have been used. The poets of Ireland claimed some human victims also; not merely from their own people, but including a relatively sophisticated Anglo-Irish state official,⁴⁵ who nevertheless was no less superstitious than those whom he affected to rule,⁴⁶ and no doubt the more susceptible to spells on that account. Even in the twilit time of Gaelic social decline, in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, poets retained their ability to kill. Eoghan O'Rahilly is supposed to have killed a man with his poetry, though as his editor points out, most of the satire of contemporary Irish poets was little more than ‘rhythmical barging’;⁴⁷ a sad genre which we also see exemplified in David O Bruadair's fierce poem against a bar-maid who would not allow him any more credit; this is a powerful piece of invective, worthy in many ways of Archilochus, and expressing, again like Archilochus, miserable personal circumstances with indignation rather than shame.⁴⁸

This is the end of a long Irish tradition in which poets were honoured, as they were in Greece,⁴⁹ and feared, as they do not seem to have been in Greece. Satire was a more important constituent of poetic activity in Ireland than in Greece, and it was organized into a number of different kinds, appropriate to different purposes.⁵⁰ In its very early form, Irish poetic satire had a spell-like character, seeking to inflict wounds by the homoeopathic power of words descriptive of them, and not yet paying much attention to the delineation of personal characteristics or individual vices.

This simple magic by innate power of words themselves was a fearful weapon. Coipre Mac Etain's attack upon the king Brés, which is mentioned in an account of the second battle of Moytura, simply compares his condition to starvation, isolation, loneliness and misery of spirit, and in this way, according to the story, irrecoverably robs him of his vitality and confidence.⁵¹ The story is preserved in a manuscript of the tenth century b.c., but it clearly refers to pre-Christian times. Clearly the bard wished to impose a certain physical condition by his curse, which in its comprehensive exclusion of its victims from the society of men and human comforts of every kind resembles the traditional curse of the Bouzyges⁵² which the Athenians ceremonially directed against offenders of their city and its laws. The infliction of shame does not seem to be an emphatic element in the Coipre's intention, although any unfavourable thing said about a king or any other man in a high position in ancient society inevitably brought some shame and dishonour to him.

In later satires an acrid note of personal ridicule and sarcastic comment, comparable to that of Archilochus, becomes the dominant element; but the characteristics of the ancient spell do not entirely disappear, and in the seventeenth century we find Feardocha O Dalaigh with spell-like insistence and comprehensiveness calling down the curses of God, the Virgin, Apostles, Pope, priests, monks, widows and orphans upon the party whom he wishes to assail.⁵³

A manuscript of the fourteenth century tells how Athirne and his sons made satires about a beautiful woman called Luaine, because she would not sleep with them; and as a result of their satires her face was blemished and she died of shame.⁵⁴ Here we have an interesting link between the earlier type of poetic spell, like that from which Brés suffered, and the later more ‘satirical’ type which induces shame. Shame, or a quite literal ‘loss of face’ in the case of Luaine, arose from something quite obvious and simple, a beautiful woman's loss of the beauty which brought her honour in her society. She was not merely disfigured by the three blisters of Reproach, Ill-fame and Shame, represented by their corresponding colours of unjust judgments, black, red and white; she was also degraded and, in spite of their injustice and her innocence, could not survive.

Such are the ways of the ‘shame’ culture, in which honour is more significant than innocence, and disgrace can drive out and overwhelm consciousness of right. Such was the fate of Lucretia, in Roman tradition, who proved herself innocent by the self-imposed trial of death; and such also, perhaps, were the fates of the daughters of Lycambes. And in both Greek and Irish cultures, underneath the complex mathematics of honour and shame, there persisted the magical superstition of simple souls, like the girl described by Theocritus, attempting by the aid of the wryneck on its wheel, to bring back her lover;⁵⁵ or in nineteenth century Ireland, the persistence of a belief that to have a poem, even in fulsome praise, made about one was an unlucky thing and likely to bring death. This attitude is well summed up by a countrywoman whose words are quoted by Douglas Hyde. Talking about the dreadful fate of Mary Hines, a beautiful girl celebrated in the poetry of the nineteenth century Irish poet Anthony Raftery, she said: ‘Divil long does a person live who has a poem made on them.’⁵⁶

Greek poetry that is known to us has none of this true primitive magic about it. It has been secularized of magic—even the hymns to the gods have a secular flavour. We cannot deny that there may have been earlier, more magical forms, but they are not available to us.⁵⁷ The process of rationalization and the adoption of a laic attitude has already gone a considerable distance in the time of Hesiod, whose Theogonia does not reproduce the sacral character of the Asianic poems which were amongst its models.⁵⁸ Hesiod wishes to teach and persuade, rather than cast spells, in spite of his characteristic fear of ill omens. His wish, like that of any Greek, is not to offend the gods.

Archilochus' connections with the cults of the gods on Paros and his enjoyment of the special patronage of Apollo did not confer upon him the powers of a wizard; but he had a genius for poetry which he and others regarded as a gift of the gods, and this faculty enabled him to deploy his words most hurtfully. He is far off from the world of Coipre, and from that of Athirne, even though we observe a comparable element of ‘shame’ culture involved in the case of Luaine.

Outside the legend of Orpheus, whose art had physical ‘magic’ effects, Greek poets did not wield supernatural power, but left that to the gods whom they served. Assertion of such powers would savour of υβριs. Nothing in Archilochus' fragments suggests that he regarded himself as a ‘magical’ person capable of inflicting injury by his words. This did not prevent him from praying down curses on his enemies in his verses, or asserting his power to hurt: the former is what anyone, poet or not, would do to enemies; the latter is part confidence in his satirical genius, part intense hatred, and part a sense of being unjustly treated. If he killed Lycambes and his daughters, it was by shaming them rather than rhyming them to death like Irish rats.

We know from the observation of other cultures than the Greek that shame can kill, and that death can seem preferable to dragging out an ungrateful existence bereft not merely of all the honourable opinion of one's fellow men,⁵⁹ but so degraded that the victim can no longer be regarded or be capable of regarding himself as a member of the community. This state of mind is not ‘guilt’ in the sense of a consciousness of having done wrong or acted against the ethos of society intentionally. It has nothing to do with the ‘guilt’ culture of Christianity and modern Western society. It is more comparable to a deep sense of social contamination; of being stained or polluted by the onslaught of evil, vice, or injustice. ‘Shame’ in this sense is not merely superficial, or imposed from without; it arises irrespective of the justice or otherwise of its causation. Life can become unendurable for those who are shamed, afflicted as they are by a self-hatred that cannot be rationalized away by arguing the essential innocence of the sufferer.⁶⁰ It is only in the time of Plato that we find it explicitly argued by his Socrates in the first book of the Republic that it is less happy or advantageous to commit injustice than endure it.

The suicide of a person irredeemably shamed may be observed in the case of Iokasta (Epikaste in Homer). Homer's version simply relates that she kills herself for shame,⁶¹ as a result of finding out the nature of her relationship to Oedipus; Sophocles' Iokasta only decides to kill herself when it becomes apparent to her that the incestuous relationship is inevitably going to be published at large.⁶² The story of Phaedra and Hippolytus is more complex: in her decision to kill herself and leave a message alleging her dishonour at the hands of Hippolytus, thereby implicating him in the shame which she herself has suffered as a result of his rejection of her love, she certainly utilizes the ethical equipment of the kind of society that emphasizes shame and honour as standards of its members. Whether she also feels ‘guilt’ in addition to shame, is arguable; but her action can be interpreted in terms of ‘shame’ or honour, and probably many Athenians of the fifth century who witnessed Euripides' Hippolytus plays simply understood it in that way.

Further, there is evidence that the Greeks feared the dead, especially the spirits of those who had been unjustly killed. J. G. Frazer points out an interesting survival in Greece of a very primitive way of driving such spirits away, when he mentions in the course of his general discussion of fear of the dead in many cultures, the example of Aigisthus in Euripides' Electra⁶³ throwing stones at the tomb of Agamemnon, whom he has murdered. He mentions elsewhere our one piece of evidence for the fear of the spirits of suicides in Greece: a reference in Aeschines to the custom of burying a suicide's hand separate from the corpse—so that the dead man cannot use the hand against others which he has used so mercilessly against himself.⁶⁴

I do not suggest that these points represent the most important part of the Lycambids' motivation in killing themselves; but the idea of suicide as an act of revenge may very well have been familiar enough.⁶⁵ By killing themselves, they vanquish the person who has driven them to do the deed; it is he who, being left behind, must justify himself before the world, and their ghosts persist to do him harm amongst his fellow citizens.

The most pressing motive for Lycambes and his daughters to seek their own deaths would hardly be this desire for revenge, but more probably a conviction that for all practical purposes they were already dead because their honour had been killed. It is probable that the process whereby they were brought to the state of mind in which they killed themselves lasted over a period in which, possibly for years, they endured the fury of Archilochus' poetic attacks upon them.⁶⁶ Some climax of vexation could be inferred finally to have made life intolerable for them. If this is a reasonable hypothesis, have we in the remains of Archilochus' poetry any fragment which seems to be a suitable candidate for the part of final detonator of the family's misery? Of the number of fragments which have an insulting character and refer to women, there are some that probably do not apply to the Lycambids at all, or at least are in doubt. None of these smaller fragments seems, in the present state of our knowledge, to fit this role. But the power and ferocity, the ingenuity of scurrilous description and sexual allusion in the Cologne fragment strongly favour its claims for this honour. Who, even now, could endure without anguish the singing of such a song against themselves in the streets? It and presumably others like it which are lost could be used as hammer-blows to shatter the position of the Lycambids in their society.

Notes

1. Horace Epode 6, 11; Serm. 2, 3 11; Epist. 1, 19, 23; Ars Poet. 79 (Tarditi, Archil. 84, 85, 86, 87); cf. chapter 2 note 87 above.

2. Epist. 1, 19, 31; nec sponsae laqueum famoso carmine nectit.

3. Epist. 1, 19, 2315: Parios ego primus iambos ostendi Latio / numeros animosque secutus /Archilochi non res et agentia verba Lycamben.

4. Ovid Ibis 54.

5. However, Ovid's scholiast is positive that Lycambes hanged himself, so also are the scholiasts on the Ovidian passage. The latter is certain of the statement that Archilochus was pursued by the friends of Lycambes, and himself eventually committed suicide—a story for which there is no other evidence whatever. The scholia also contain a disquieting reference to Hipponax, which may be derived from the plot of a comic play in which Archilochus confronts this other great satirist: cf. chapter 2 note 168 above.

6. Gaetulicus, AP, 7 71 is our only authority for three rather than two daughters.

7. See note 3 above.

8. E.g., it has a third century b.c. predecessor, the theme of which it follows: Bond, pp. 1-11, see chapter 2 note 91.

9. Eusebius Praep. Ev. 5, 32.

10. Another Lycambid, a sister of Neoboule if the Cologne Papyrus is authentic; the fragment Pap Ox 2310 is addressed to a woman who very probably is Neoboule, though F. R. Adrados has reservations about this: PP 41 (1955-56) 38-48; see also chapter 2 note 88.

11. Nor Hipponax either, nor any other composer of like material: Julian Epist. 89 b 300 C.

12. Julian Misopog. 1. 337 a.

13. Julian Epist. 80.

14. Chapter 2 notes 84, 85.

15. Chapter 2 note 86.

16. Mnes. Inscr. E 1, col II, 45.

17. V. Grassmann, Die Erotischen Epoden des Horaz, Literarischer Hintergrund und Sprachliche Tradition (Munich 1966), p. 4.

18. In a play of Diphilus (Athenaeus 599 d).

19. Bond, p. 11.

20. See the discussion in chapter 5, also the appendix.

21. Hauvette, p. 69; Wolf, pp. 62-63.

22. It is impossible to be quite certain of this in view of the brevity of the extract, but the intention of Critias seems to have been to emphasize Archilochus' self-destructive tendencies rather than the analytical one of comprehending all the facts about his relationship with other people. He is propounding a case—as apparently Alcidamas also is—not writing biography.

23. The occurrence … is probably to be translated as ‘rather too satirically’ in its context of A's exile: Mnes. Inscr. E, col III, 37; Ovid's scholiast on Ibis 521 seems to know the story about his exile for satirical acerbity.

24. Bond, p. 11.

25. Fgs 54 T 10-11; 104 T; 109 T.

26. E.g., 30 T, in which he asks Apollo to curse some person or persons, has no apparent connection with the Lycambid family.

27. 193 T.

28. Lasserre, Les Epodes etc.

29. 36 T.

30. Piccolomini, pp. 264 ff.; Bond, p. 10 n. 11; M. Treu, pp. 251-52.

31. Piccolomini, pp. 264 ff.; Hauvette, p. 69.

32. 103 T. The phrase follows a Homeric model: Odyssey 22, 412, and is also echoed by Cratinus (see Tarditi's comments on the fragment); for a different view, Grassmann, pp. 4-5.

33. The most palpable attack in the fragments themselves is 166 T (see chapter 2 note 91) … ; other fragments less certain nevertheless suggest strongly the reputation of the beauty and virtue of the daughter: Rankin, GB. The Cologne Papyrus also is a fierce attack upon Neoboule; for the rest, there is the secondary tradition discussed above.

34. For references to recent articles, etc., propounding this view see Rankin, Eos, p. 1; the best known proponents of the ‘magic’ theory are Hendrickson, pp. 101-27; Elliott, Power, pp. 1-15; Antaios 4 (1963) 313-26. Also Vendryes, pp. 94-96.

35. Chapter 2 note 74.

36. For an attempted reconstruction of this oracle, see Parke, p. 93.

37. Kontoleon, Arkh. Eph. pp. 80 f.; Rankin, Eos, footnotes 79-85.

38. 54 T (Pap Ox 2310): Rankin, Eranos, p. 7.

39. Piccolomini, p. 266.

40. Iliad 3, 39; 13, 769. …

41. A repetitive element can be seen in the refrain of Theocritus Idyll 2, which is about a magic spell; also perhaps in Catullus' Poem 5, and certainly in Patrick's Hymn, W. Stokes and J. Strachan, Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, vol. 2 (Cambridge 1903), p. 357.

42. Hesiod Works and Days 39, 221, 264.

43. As far as I know, Ben Jonson is the first modern to have made the comparison between Archilochus and the Irish poets in his Poetaster, 160-65.

44. W. Shakespeare, As You Like It, III, 2; it is also mentioned by Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne and others.

45. As recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters: D. Plunket Barton, Links between Ireland and Shakespeare (Dublin/London 1919), p. 64.

46. E.g., G. L. Kitteredge describes how in the sixteenth and seventeenth century educated men in England, including the most distinguished jurists, accepted easily the notion of witchcraft: ‘English Witchcraft and James the First’, in Toy, pp. 1-65.

47. Danta Aodhagain Ui Rathaille, Irish Texts Soc. (1911) XXX: he is said to have killed a man by his satire, but it is clear that much of his poetry of attack left his enemies unmoved.

48. Duanaire Dhaibhidh Ui Bhruadair, edited by J. MacErlean, Irish Texts Soc. (1913), XXXI.

49. Odyssey 6, 184-85; 471-81.

50. Diodorus V, 31.2; Vendryes 95; Mercier, p. 109.

51. The spell-like character can clearly be seen:

    cen colt crib [cerníne]
    cen gert ferrba fora n-assa athirni
    cen adba fir fer druba diserche
    cen dil dami resi rob sen Brisi

    without food quickly in a dish
    without a cow's milk whereon a calf grows
    without a man's abode under the gloom of night
    without paying a company of story tellers, let that be Bres' condition!

    ‘and there was nothing but lassitude on that man from that time’ from W. Stokes, Revue Celtique 12 (1891) 52-130; cf. Elliot, Power, p. 38; Hendrickson, pp. 124-25; J. Travis, PMLA 57 (1942) 909-915.

52. E. Ziebarth, RE s.v. ‘Fluch’; J. H. Mozley, ‘On Cursing in Ancient Times’, appendix to Ovid, The Art of Love and Other Poems (Loeb Classical Library, London 1947).

53. Quoted by Mercier, pp. 148 f.

54. W. Stokes, ‘The Wooing of Luaine and the Death of Athirne’, Revue Celtique 24 (1903) 270-87; Elliott, Power, p. 27.

55. Idyll 2.

56. D. Hyde, Abhraín atá leagtha ar an Reachtuíre (Dublin 1903), p. 16.

57. F. N. Robinson, ‘Satirists and Enchanters in Early Irish Literature’ in Toy, p. 99.

58. M. L. West, Hesiod, Theogony (Oxford 1966), pp. 9-10; 14-15.

59. Julio Caro Baroja, ‘Honour and Shame, A Historical Account of Several Conflicts’, translated by R. Johnson, in Honour and Shame, pp. 79-137 (esp pp. 85 f.).

60. Sophocles shows Ajax (Aias 666-90) attempting to rationalize away his sense of dishonour by means of the characteristically Greek argument from the balance and rhythm of the natural world's changes. The argument fails to help him and his self-destructive desire prevails.

61. Odyssey 11, 271-80: she hanged herself for grief: Eustathius in Od 1684.

62. Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus 1060-61.

63. J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, Part IX, p. 19 referring to Euripides El 327.

64. Ibid., Part IV, pp. 44-49, 141, 220; Aeschines In Ctesiphontem 244.

65. B. Bohannan, African Homicide and Suicide (Princeton 1960), p. xxx mentions the custom of the injured person killing himself before the door of his offender. For suicide in the ancient world see Thalheim, RE s.v. Selbstmord: R. Hirzel, Der Selbstmord (Darmstadt 1968, reprint), who, significantly for our theme, quotes (p. 16 n. 2) a number of examples of Greek women who killed themselves on account of shame.

66. Chapter 2, the section on Neoboule.

List of Abbreviations

AP: Anthologia Palatina

Bond: G. W. Bond, ‘Archilochus and the Lycambides, A New Literary Fragment’, Hermathena 80 (1952) 1-11

Diels-Kranz: H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Griechisch und Deutsch, herausgegeben von Walther Kranz (Berlin 1972)

Elliott, Power: R. C. Elliott, The Power of Satire (Princeton 1960)

Elliott, Satire: R. C. Elliott, ‘Satire und Magie’, Antaios 4 (1962) 313-26

Frazer: J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, A Study in Magic and Religion

Hauvette: A. Hauvette, Archiloque, sa vie et ses poésies (Paris 1905)

Hendrickson: G. L. Hendrickson ‘Archilochus and the victims of his Iambics’, AJP 46 (1925) 101-27

Honour and Shame: Honour and Shame, The Values of Mediterranean Society, edited by J. G. Peristiany (Nature of Human Society Series, London 1965)

Kontoleon, Arkh Eph: N. Kontoleon, ‘Neai Epigraphai peri tou Arkhilokhou ek Parou’, Arkh Eph 91 (1952) 32-95

Lasserre: F. Lasserre, Les Épodes d'Archiloque (Paris 1950)

Mnes. Inscr.: Mnesiepis Inscriptio, Tarditi, Archilochus, p. 4 ff

Parke: H. W. Parke, ‘The Newly Discovered Delphic Responses from Paros’, CQ 8 (1958) 90-94

Piccolomini: A. Piccolomini, ‘Quaestionum de Archilocho capita tria’, Hermes 18 (1883) 264 ff

PP: La Parola del Passato, Rivista di Studi Classici

Rankin, Eos: H. D. Rankin, ‘Archilochus was no magician’, Eos 19 (1974) 5-21

Rankin, Eranos: H. D. Rankin, ‘Archilochus (Pap. Ox. 2310 Fr 1 Col 1)’, Eranos 72 (1974) 1-15

Rankin, GB: H. D. Rankin, … Critias and his criticism of Archilochus’, Grazer Beiträge 3 (1975) 323-34

RE: Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft

Travis: J. Travis, ‘A Druidic Prophecy, the First Irish Satire and a Poem to Raise Blisters’, PMLA 57 4, 1 (December 1942), 901-15

West, CQ: M. L. West, ‘Greek Poetry 2000 b.c.-700 b.c.’, CQ 23 (1974) 179-92

Wolf: F. Wolf, Untersuchungen zu Archilochos' Epoden, Dissertation, Halle-Wittenburg 1966