War and the Muses - Archilochos, History's First "Soldier-Poet"

Homer’s tales of Troy and Odysseus laid the foundations of the Western literary tradition. Not much is known about Homer, beyond that he was a bard. And certainly nothing in the fragmentary bits and pieces of information that allegedly relate to his life suggests that he was actually ever a soldier; indeed, the strong tradition that he was blind suggests otherwise. Quite different was Archilochos, the first “soldier-poet” known to history.

Almost forgotten today, Archilochos was quite famous in Classical Antiquity. Meleager (fl., c. 100 B.C.), himself no mean versifier, called Archilochos "a thistle with graceful leaves," referring to the poet’s often bitter satire. The Greeks and Romans considered him the finest satirist, and in modern literary criticism ill-natured satire is known as “Archilochian Bitterness” in his memory. But he also wrote lyrics, elegies, and fables. Tradition credits him with inventing iambic verse, in which a short unstressed syllable is followed by a long stressed one, as in the King’s speech before Agincourt in Shakespeare’s Henry V,

If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.

Archilochos is also credited with telling the first known animal fables in any European language, providing in the process the first known reference to apes, and with being the first poet to actually refer to himself in his work.

Archilochos’ life is rather better known than Homer’s. He hailed from the Aegean island of Paros, where he was born around 680 B.C. “Archilochos” may not actually be his real name, for it can mean “Company Commander” or “Captain,” and perhaps was adopted as a pen name. He was the son of Telesicles of Paros, a member of a distinguished family. Enipo, the poet’s mother was a slave. Although his father granted recognition to Archilochos, local law apparently barred him from inheriting. As a young man, Archilochos was for a time engaged to a young Parian woman, Neobulé, but her father, Lycambes, married her off instead to a wealthier man. Bitterly disappointed, Archilochos took his vengeance in the form of verses that painted the woman and her sister as being promiscuous. His language was so graphic (it’s “Triple X” explicit even for our times) that tradition has it both girls and their father committed suicide from shame. Perhaps as a result of this episode, when Archilochos was about 25 he went to Thasos, in the northern Aegean, where many years before his father had established a Parian colony. His stay in Thasos was short, however, for in a battle against the Saians of Thrace Archilochos is alleged to have dropped his shield, the better to get away from the foe, for which he was ostracized.

After this, Archilochos roamed a great deal. A mercenary – “I shall be called Soldier of Fortune” – he made his living by the sword, and sought solace from his troubles and vengeance on his enemies in his verse. True to the literary form of a roving adventurer, he had a side-kick, one Glaukos, a Thasoan, whom he often addressed in verse.< We know only a little about Archilochos’ military career. Aside from the Thracians, there are hints in tradition and in his poems of service against the Chalkians of Euboia, the Samnians, the Naxians, and perhaps the Ephesians, as well as the city-states of Croton and Sybaris, in Southern Italy, when he was in the service of Siris. He also seems to have fought for Sparta during the Second Messenian-Spartan War (650-630), in which case he may have met the younger war poet Trytaios. Eventually Archilochos returned to Paros. When he was about 45 or 50, old for the times, and even older for a mercenary, he took part in a battle between the Parians and the Naxians, from a neighboring island, during which he was killed in action by one Calondas. So great was Archilochos’ reputation as a poet, even in his lifetime, that when, years later, Calondas chanced to visit the Oracle at Delphi, the priestesses refused to admit him until he had undergone rites that propitiated the soul of the slain servant of the Muses..

Archilochos wrote about nature, the sea, the gods, fate, sex, sports, love, comradeship, politics, figs, people, life, death, and pretty much everything else. But he especially wrote about war and soldiering, about which he knew quite well.

For example,

Give the spear-shy youths
Courage.
Make them learn
The battle's won
By the gods.

Of the short, brutal clashes of Hoplites that characterized the origins of what has come to be known as “The Western way of war,” Archilochos wrote,

Few bows will be stretched and not many will be
the slings, when Ares at last brings war
into the plain. The brutal work will be for swords.
Our enemy yonder are masters of such warfare,
Lords of Euboia, famed for their spears

and,

Soul, my soul, bemuddled with impossible cares,
stand up and defend yourself hurling your breast
right at the enemy’s ambushes, stand full against them,
foot firmly planted.

In a sentiment undoubtedly familiar to many a soldier who had to serve under some aristocratic chucklehead,

I do not like a tall commander, strutting about,
primping in curls or with only half a beard.
Give me a short leader you can clearly see,
bandy-legged, solid on his feet, and full of heart.

He was also aware of the oddity of his status as both a soldier and a poet. Thus,

Comrade to Enyalios,
The great god War,
I do double duty.
With poetry, the lover’s gift,
I serve the Lady Muses.

Archilochos seems to have had no illusions about war. He was a no-nonsense soldier, who believed “appearance is not important in battle.” There is little about “glory” in his work, and much about the reality of war, writing that “Ares is a democrat, there are no privileged people on a battlefield.” In one place we find him saying “Fields fattened by corpses” and in another “of the seven lying dead, whom we overtook on foot, we, a thousand slayers,” and in yet another comments that there were times in battle when “feet are the most valuable" of one’s resources

So it’s understandable that the Spartans, who urged their sons to “return with your shield or upon it,” would expel him from their lands lest he corrupt their youth; what else could they do with a guy who wrote,

Some Thracian barbarian
Sports my shield today.
When the fight got hot,
I left it by a bush and ran
To save my precious hide.
It was a beautiful shield,
But I can get another,
Just as good.

Still, he was enough of a professional soldier to understand eagerness for combat, in one fragment saying "I long for a fight with you, just as a thirsty man longs for drink."

Archilochos was quite famous in ancient times. Some two centuries after his death, the great comic playwright Aristophanes wrote favorably of him, and three centuries later the equally great Roman orator Cicero classed him with Homer, Pindar, and Sophocles, while Horace imitated his metrical forms. Yet little of Archilochos’ work survives today, some 300 fragments altogether, plus a few paraphrases, mostly because they were cited in works by other writers. Although a number of these fragments are quite long, running several stanzas, most are no more than four or five verses long, and some just a single phrase. The recent discovery in Egypt of some 30 lines hitherto unknown led to headlines in some serious newspapers around the globe, though most refrained from quoting them, due to their graphic nature.

In ancient times Archilochos’ grave on Paros – much of which survives – bore the inscription “Hasten on, O Wayfarer, lest you stir up the hornets," for by tradition it was home to a nest of the insects, drawn there by the bitterness of the poet’s aura.