Expelled from Ephesus in 540 BC by the tyrant Athenagoras, he took refuge in Clazomenae, where he spent the rest of his life in poverty. His deformed flgure and malicious disposition exposed him to the caricature of the Chian sculptors Bupalus and Athenis, upon whom he revenged himself by issuing against them a series of satires. They are said to have hanged themselves like Lycambes and his daughters when assailed by Archilochus, the model and predecessor of Hipponax.
His coarseness of thought and feeling, his rude vocabulary, his want of grace and taste, and his numerous allusions to matters of merely local interest prevented his becoming a favourite in Attica. He was considered the inventor of parody and of a peculiar metre, the scazon or choliambus, which substitutes a spondee for the final iambus of an iambic senarius, and is an appropriate form for the burlesque character of his poems.
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.