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text:hermippus_poems

Elegy and Iambus. with an English Translation by. J. M. Edmonds. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1931. 2.

Hermippus: Poems

“Hermippus:—Of Athens, comic poet of the Old Comedy, a one-eyed man, brother of the comic poet Myrtilus;1 he produced forty plays.2”

Suidas Lexicon


“About this time Aspasia was prosecuted for impiety at the instance of the comedy-writer Hermippus, who included in the indictment the charge of making her house a place of assignation for Pericles with freeborn women…. Pericles secured her acquittal very much against the evidence, according to Aeschines, by shedding tears for her and appealing to the jurors.”

Plutarch Life of Pericles:


“Then Hermippus again lampooned Hyperbolus.”

Aristophanes Clouds


“Hermippus too, the poet of the Old Comedy, wrote Parodies .”

Polemon in Athenaeus

Iambi

Trimeters

Hermippus in the first iambic poem in his Trimeters gives the children of Asclepius by Lampetia daughter of the Sun as Machaon, Podaleirius, Iaso, Panacea, and the youngest Aegle.” Scholiast on Aristophanes Plutus [on Iaso] “‘White-fig’ is the name of a sort of fig-tree, and it may be this which produces the white figs. Hermippus speaks of it in his Iambi thus:

but the dried figs of the white-fig tree apart

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner


… unless indeed they call by this name a kind of mud (or mortar: like Hermippus in his Trimeters.

He's built without clamps, only with the ὑπαγωγεῖς of his own habits.3

Scholiast on Aristophanes Birds


[ ὑπαγωγεύς ‘trowel’] “ ὑπαγωγεύς .., according to others a sort of mortar; compare Hermippus:”

Suidas Lexicon


Tetrameters

I come to talk over my cups, not as one of the Cylicranes ridiculed by the comedy-writer Hermippus in his Iambi thus:

I have come afoot into the spleen-yards4 of the Cylicranes, and so beheld the beautiful city of Heraclea.

These, according to Nicander of Thyateira, are the Heracleans who live at the foot of Mt. Oeta, being so named from a certain Lydian called Cylix (cup), who was one of the comrades who fought with Heracles.

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner


διασαλακωνίζω is used in the same way by Hermippus in the Tetrameters:

Quick, get the shoes on, and then step out opulently like this, with a lordly and delicate strut

But afterwards when she was quite the general I saw her turned Helot and playing the harlot and walking with a strut.5

Scholiast on Aristophanes Wasps


It is possible, according to Symmachus, that κεβλήπυρις (generally translated ‘redcap’) is the name not of one bird but of two (i.e. κέβλη and πυρίς ]; anyhow the κέβλη is recorded by Callimachus … Compare Hermippus in the Tetrameters, where a man is spoken of thus:

and any κεβλήπυρις of the dunghill of Themistocles;

so that it would seem there is a mistake in one or other of these passages.

Scholiast on Aristophanes Birds:


“.. Eggs and cakes and dried fruits. The same account is given by … and Eupolis, and Hermippus in the Iambi. ”

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on prizes in the game of cottabus]


Hermippus the comedy-writer calls the soldier's lamp

σύνθετον or combination,

in the Iambi.

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner


1 cf. Suid. Μυρτίλος (‘son of Lysis’)

2 in two lists of comic poets Herm. comes after Pherecrates, who flourished 430 B.C. (Wilhelm Urkund. Dram. in Athen 107, 123)

3 cf. Hesych. ὑπαγωγεύς ; but the ancient explanation is doubtful; ὑπαγ. is more likely to mean the tool with which the stones were brought flush with one another, i.e. he is as it were building with stones laid ‘dry’ and without clamps

4 prob. a play on οἰνόπεδα ‘vineyards,’ Cylicranes being taken to mean κυλικοκρανεῖς ‘cup-mixers,’ and the whole thing means ‘I am suffering from a debauch’ cf. Hesych. Κυλικράνων and Scyth. p. 244

5 reading and translation doubtful; some edd. connect with fr. 4

text/hermippus_poems.txt · Last modified: 2014/01/15 11:57 by 127.0.0.1