Archilochus

Archilochus, of Paros, a famous lyric poet of Greece, flourished at the beginning of the seventh century B.C. Urged by poverty, he is said to have left his native place, and settled with a colony at Thasos, but his vein of sarcasm made him so offensive that he had to migrate once more. Little is known of his subsequent career, but tradition reports that he was killed in a war between the Parians and Naxians, and buried by the sea-shore. His verses - chiefly iambic - breathed, we are told, the bitterness of his spirit, and attacked friend and foe alike. His Hymn to Hercules won the prize at Olympia. The few fragments handed down to us give no idea of his genius, and scarcely confirm adverse criticisms. They reveal rather a manly, vigorous nature, influenced by theistic fatalism.