Hippōnax
(
Ἱππώναξ). A Greek iambic poet of Ephesus, who about B.C.
540 was banished to Clazomenae by Athenagoras and Comas, tyrants of his native city. At
Clazomenae, two sculptors, Bupalus (
Hor. Epod. vi.
14) and Athenis, made the little, thin, ugly poet ridiculous in caricature; but he
avenged himself in such bitter iambic verses that, like Lycambes and his daughter, who were
persecuted by
Archilochus (q.v.), 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 (“limping”), from its having a spondee or
trochee in the last place, instead of the usual iambic foot. He is also reckoned among the
very first to produce parodies of epic poetry, and in his satire he spared neither his own
parents nor the gods. Of his poems we have only a few fragments, which are collected by Bergk
in his
Poetae Lyrici Graeci (4th ed. 1878).