(fl ?650 bce). Greek iambic and elegiac poet. He was a native of the Ionian island of Paros. ‘I am the squire of lord Ares’, he sang, ‘and skilled in the lovely gift of the Muses’ (Edmonds, frag.1). More artist than military man, he expressed both the external world and his responses to it in a remarkably personal tone.
His surviving poems contain no certain references to string instruments. The first word (tēnella) of his victory hymn, however, supposedly imitates the twang of a lyre string (Scholiast on Pindar, Olympian, ix.1–4); and one heavily restored fragment (Edmonds, frag.114, xiv) may refer to lyre playing accompanying the dance. He did clearly mention the aulos as a feature of religious or convivial occasions (frags.76; 32); possibly, though not certainly, he associated it with the performance of elegiac verse (frag.123) – a likely combination in this early period of elegy. According to a late source (Pseudo-Plutarch, On Music, 1140f–1141a), Archilochus abolished the strict rule which had ordained only one note for each syllable of text and introduced new styles of rhythmic composition such as the trimeter and combinations of different rhythmic genera, as well as the practice of allowing the text to be spoken as well as sung. This same source also attributes to him the discovery of independent instrumental accompaniments, that is, accompaniments not in unison with the song. While the use of recitative relates most naturally to iambic verse (which he developed with particular skill), elegy may have been involved as well. He not infrequently combined different metrical patterns; his use of iambs and trochees, moreover, shows several kinds of substitution. Possibly his metrical subtlety was paralleled by a characteristic imputed to Archilochus, the refined handling of varied and intermingled musical rhythms.
E. Diehl, ed.: Anthologia lyrica graeca (Leipzig, 1925, rev. 3/1949–52/R by R. Beutler)
J.M. Edmonds: Elegy and Iambus (London and Cambridge, MA, 1931/R)
F. Lasserre and A. Bonnard, eds.: Archiloque: Fragments (Paris, 1958)
M. Treu, ed.: Archilochos (Munich, 1959)
M.L. West, ed.: Iambi et elegi graeci, i (Oxford, 1971), 1–108
D.L. Page, ed.: Supplementa lyricis graecis (Oxford, 1974), 151ff
F. Will: Archilochos (New York, 1969)
G.M. Kirkwood: Early Greek Monody: the History of a Poetic Type (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1974), 20–52
A.P. Burnett: Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho (London, 1983)
G. Comotti: ‘Il valore del termine entasis in Ps. Plut. De mus. 28 a proposito dei ritmi di Archiloco’, Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica, new ser., xiv (1983), 93–101
B. Gentili: ‘Archiloco e i livelli della realtá’, Poesia e pubblico nella Grecia antica: da Omero al V secolo (Rome, 1984, 2/1995), 239–61; (Eng. trans., 1988), 93–101
G.A. Privitera: ‘Il ditirambo come spettacolo musicale: il ruolo di Archiloco e di Arione’, La musica in Grecia: Urbino 1985, 123–31
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 71–4
For further bibliography see Greece, §I.
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN