Note 1558 — SULPICIA.

Iambo. The Iambic metre was peculiarly adapted to Satire. Hence its probable etymology from ἰάπτω, jacio; and hence the epithet criminosi applied to these verses by Horace (i., Od. xvi., 2), and truces by Catullus (xxxvi., 5). Archilochus, the Parian, who flourished in the eighth century B.C. (Cic., Tusc. Q., i., 1; Bähr, ad Herod., i., 12), is said to have been the inventor of the metre, and to have employed it against Lycambes, who had promised him his daughter Neobule, but afterward retracted. Cf. Hor., A. P., 79, "Archilochum proprio rabies armavit Iambo." i., Ep. xix., 23, "Parios ego primus Iambos Ostendi Latio numeros animosque secutus Archilochi non res et agentia verba Lycamben." The allusion in the next line is to Hipponax, who flourished cir. B.C. 540; Ol. lx. He was a native of Ephesus; but being expelled from his native country by the tyrant Athenagoras, he settled at Clazomenæ, now the Isle of St. John. The common story is, that he was so hideously ugly, that the sculptors Bupalus and Athenis caricatured him. And to avenge this insult, Hipponax altered the Iambic of Archilochus into a more bitter form by making the last foot a spondee, which gave the verse a kind of halting rhythm, and was hence called Scazontic, from σκάζω· or Choliambic, from χῶλος, "lame." Diomed., iii., 503. [A specimen may be seen in Martial's bitter epigram against Cato. i., Ep. I, "Cur in Theatrum Cato severe venisti?"] In this metre he so bitterly satirized them that they hanged themselves, as Lycambes had done, in consequence of the ridicule of Archilochus. Hence Horace, vi., Epod. 13, "Qualis Lycambæ spretus infido gener Aut acer hostis Bupalo." Pliny (H. N., xxxvi., 5) treats the whole story as mythical. Cf. Mart., i., Ep. 97, for some good specimens, and Catull., xxxix. Another form of Choliambic verse is the substitution of an Antibacchius for the final Iamb.: e. g., "Remitte pallium mihi quod involasti." Catull., xxv. Two of Hipponax's verses may be seen, Strabo, lib. xiv., c. 1.