Chapter 4. Hipponax: Creating the Pharmakos

Hipponax was an iambic satirist second only to Archilochus in fame, and his traditional life shares important themes with Archilochus’ (for example, causing death through satire). [1] Like Archilochus, he is an exiled poet. Hipponax is of special interest because he is the earliest extant witness for the pharmakos rite. It is striking that an exiled, death-dealing blame poet should be our earliest source for the pharmakos ritual; this poetic pharmakos uses the scapegoat custom in order to practice blame, to make someone else a pharmakos.

Hipponax was a satirist whose abuse was, if anything, even more extreme than that of Archilochus. [2] One poem is a perfect verbal mirroring of physical aggression: “Take my clothes, I’ll punch Bupalus in the eye. For I’m ambidextrous, and I don’t miss when I hit.” [3] As is often the case for blame poets, the curse plays a prominent part in his work: Leonidas wrote: However, the view of Hipponax as dispenser of amoral, malevolent abuse should be rejected. Even in Hipponax’s colloquial satire, with all its idiosyncrasies and verbal aggression, there is an undercurrent of ethical judgment. According to Theocritus, if you are a scoundrel, you should avoid his tomb, but if you are honest, you need not fear it. [6] If this had not been the case, Hughes argues, Callimachus would not have taken Hipponax as a model. [7]

According to the Suda, Hipponax was a native of Ephesus, [8] but was banished by the tyrants Athenagoras and Comas; he then lived in Clazomenae. [9] So we have the theme of political exile of a satirist, perhaps historical. [10]

The poet became involved in a deadly feud that is probably legendary. He was reputed to be ugly and deformed, an Aesop figure. This feels like a folkloric detail. “Hipponax … was a most eloquent poet, but ugly and deformed of face,” writes a scholiast. [11] His ugliness was satirized by insulting portraits by the brothers Bupalus and Athenis. “He was despised for his deformity … [Bupalus] painted Hipponax, a certain deformed poet, for a laugh.” [12] In return the poet satirized them through his poetry, and they hanged themselves in shame. [13] Pliny writes, “Hipponax had a remarkable facial ugliness; because of which, they [Bupalus and Athenis], out of wantonness, exhibited a mocking statue of him to crowds of laughing people. Therefore Hipponax, outraged, unleashed [14] bitterness of songs to such an extent that it is believed by some that he forced them to the noose.” [15]

A scholiast on Horace adds an Archilochean touch: “[Hipponax] sought to wed the daughter of Bupalus, but was despised for his deformity.” [16] This replication of the Archilochus–Lycambes relationship appears to be a wandering theme. It is possible that there was a historic component to the Archilochus story, but it is very unlikely that there is any truth to it here. There is likewise no early attestation for the story in Hipponax.

Though these events are almost certainly legendary, one must not forget that it is certain that Hipponax did have preferred poetic victims in Bupalus and Athenis, for many of his fragments list Bupalus by name. One at least names Athenis. [17] And unlike Lycambes, Bupalus is known as a historical figure, a sculptor, outside of Hipponax. [18]

There are frequent references to the pharmakos in Hipponax’s poetry; they are always associated with blame poetry. These show how the poet assimilates his enemies to the pharmakos, and also how he assimilates himself (the two processes are related; the satirist who drives others out of the city may eventually be driven out). [19] The following is the locus classicus for the pharmakos (5–10W/26–30Dg; 6Dg): There is a persistent association of the blame poet, often himself exiled, with scapegoat phenomena. For instance, Ovid’s Ibis, with its scholia, is a central source for pharmakos data; it is a curse poem Ovid wrote in exile. Phaedrus, the Roman versifier of Aesop, himself punished by Sejanus for his satire, wrote an important fable on a military scapegoat. Aristophanes, with his scholia, is another central source for pharmakos references. He was possibly exiled, certainly subjected to legal persecution. [23]

There are other, less well-known, pharmakos passages in Hipponax: West remarks on the difficulty of understanding the meaning of this fragment. However, we seem to have the context of blame (“The particular cabbage is specified in a parenthesis designed to stress the low-class character of the man concerned”) and clear reference to the pharmakos custom (Targēlioisin, pharmakou). West translates the last phrase, with some uncertainty, “before the pharmakos event.” [26]

Hipponax is our source for the tune played by flutes “when the pharmakoi were being led out” (τοῖς ἐκπεμπομένοις φαρμακοῖς, 152–153W/146Dg).

Another poem combines stoning and the curse: In this poem, the target for poetic attack, a woman, is assimilated to the pharmakos: she is stoned or mistreated by order of a public vote. [29] Her seaside punishment links her to the seaside death of 115W/194Dg; [30] both poems are curse poems. [31]

The poem (128W) makes the belly a focal point for abuse, reminding us of imagery previously noted. Aesop, as part of his remarkable ugliness, has a pronounced belly; [32] the Muses attack the class of shepherds, which Hesiod belongs to, as “bellies only.” [33] The wife of Eurymedontiades bolts her food; she is the gulf of all food; she eats beyond that which is decent. Thus she becomes worthy of a pharmakos death, by public decree.

We have also seen that Pindar viewed Archilochus as “fattening” himself on his hatreds. Blame is seen as something monstrous (ou kata kosmon). [34] So Hipponax’s target here is a pharmakos (according to some traditions, fed with inadequate, bad food), [35] yet also an insatiable glutton. Both the satirist and the satirist’s pharmakos victim are seen as fattening themselves in a revolting way. In an intriguing interpretation of this poem, Christopher Faraone sees it as using “hexametrical chants or incantations” designed to expel harmful famine demons or to escort human scapegoats from the city. The poem may have a political dimension, in the tradition of invective-curse that views political opponents “as rapacious pests who threaten to gobble up the commonwealth of the city and who therefore must be expelled from the community, precisely like a famine-demon.” [36]

In these poems, Hipponax uses the theme of the pharmakos in order to abuse others. Yet we also have a short, important fragment that shows the poet overtly viewing himself as the abused one, the pharmakos. “He ordered them to throw and cast stones at Hipponax.” [37] Someone orders a group of people (a mob? Bupalus and Athenis and friends?) to stone Hipponax, as the poet himself bitterly reports. Perhaps the stoning is here a metaphor for literary reprisals against his attacks, though he feels that those attacks have been justified. [38]

So, after assimilating many others to the pharmakos, Hipponax himself is assimilated to the pattern. As has been noted previously, the powers of abuse and expulsion are ambiguously interchangeable. Furthermore, according to Ovid, Hipponax died “hated, by failure of food.” As we have seen, bad food or starvation is sometimes linked to the pharmakos-death. [39] Hipponax’s poetry portrays him as afflicted by poverty, which may be the result of exile. [40]

It is significant that Hipponax reportedly attacked Bupalus and Athenis only after they had attacked him; this detail enables us to view the poet as a justified blame poet, as in the case of Archilochus and the oath-breaking Lycambes—it brings to mind Archilochus as tortured cicada, Hesiod’s nightingale in the claws of the eagle. It is also curious that Hipponax is attacking fellow artists, if artists working in a different medium. Blame is often used for internecine artistic warfare. It is entirely natural for rival artists to attack each other; the literary feud is an archaic phenomenon in the history of literature. [41] It brings to mind the myth of the poetic agōn, where two chief poets vie for supremacy; and behind that, the riddle contest of seers, in which the loser dies. [42]

On the other hand, this theme looks ahead to literary vendettas in the Hellenistic world, Callimachus being the best example of a satirist whose main targets were fellow poets. In the introduction to the Aetia (fragment 1 Pfeiffer), he attacks the “telchines,” mischievous hobgoblins, his rival poets, who have abused him because of his refusal to write epic (thus he responds in a typically defensive rhetorical posture). Callimachus’ most famous poem of abuse is the Ibis, which was directed, according to ancient testimonia, against Apollonius of Rhodes. [43] In this poem, the object of the attack is likened to the ibis because it is an unclean and destructive bird (Strabo 17.823). A scholiast tells us that Callimachus’ invective caused his target’s death—an Archilochean biographical conceit. “The intention of Ovid in [his] work is to imitate Callimachus, because just as Callimachus made invective against his enemy and led him to death, so this one …” [44]

Callimachus felt a special bond to Hipponax. In Iamb 1 (191Pf) he brings Hipponax up from the underworld; as Trypanis notes, Callimachus sees himself as a Hipponax redivivus. [45]

So, once again, Hipponax, the blame poet, is a pharmakos—as well as our primary early source for the pharmakos, for he uses pharmakos imagery to attack his poetic targets, as Aristophanes would do later. Yet the poet himself is reportedly ugly and deformed. He is a blame poet who in legend kills through his satire after he himself is unjustly satirized; he uses the curse liberally in his poetry. He is exiled after conflict with political leaders; and in a poem he portrays himself as a pharmakos who is stoned. There is no cultic drama here, [46] and no attested hero cult; but the poet is nevertheless steeped in scapegoat imagery and legend. [47]