SOURCE: “Archilochus: Blame,” in Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho, Harvard University Press, 1983, pp. 55-76.

In the following essay, Burnett examines Archilochus's fables, particularly their element of anger that led to his reputation as the poet of abuse.

The Parians who made a hero of Archilochus remembered his patriotic poems and his cult songs, but the rest of the ancient world honoured him primarily as a poet of abuse, the first and best, and one whose evil tongue could kill. He was at once the inventor and the most perfect practitioner of blame (Vell. Pat. 1.5) and his loud verses were ‘filled with rage and the venom of dread scurrility’ (AP 9.185), because he had ‘sprinkled his harsh Muse with Echidna's bile’ (AP 7.71).¹ Teachers recommended the study of his modes of attack,² and Plutarch records the moment when Cato ‘angrily and impetuously turned his energies to the writing of iambics...