SOURCE: “Archilochus and Callinus,” in Early Greek Elegy: The Elegiac Fragments of Callinus, Archilochus, Mimnermus, Tyrtaeus, Solon, Xenophanes, & Others, The University of Wales Press Board, 1926, pp. 9-12.

In the following excerpt, Hudson-Williams outlines some of the problems scholars face in trying to determine accurate dates in the life of Archilochus.

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Archilochus and Callinus; Chronology

Ever since the dawn of literary criticism there has been much wordy warfare over the rival claims of Archilochus and Callinus to be regarded as ‘the Father of Greek Elegy’. …

We have really no fixed date in the history of Archilochus; he certainly lived in the seventh century b. c., and heard of Gyges and his wealth (see infra, p. 12). No definite information can be extracted from the famous description of the noonday eclipse (Arch. 74); the words with which Aristotle introduces his quotation (Rhet. 3. 17) are of some significance. As Hauvette (Archiloque, p. 14) has...