Archilochos' context

Archilochos lived in Paros, an island in the Cylades, during the 7th century BCE, so he was writing about 200 years before the heyday of Athens and Classical Greece.

It is hardly surprising then that we have no contemporary biography or other information about his life apart from what he tells us in his poems, plus information derived in later antiquity from other material that has now been lost.

In the second chapter of 'Archilochus of Paros' H D Rankin discusses these issues. He says 'there is wide agreement that he was the son of Telesicles, who founded a colony on Paros, and his mother was a slave.

He was disappointed not to marry Neoboule, Lycambes' daughter and his satires may have driven some members of this family to suicide. He was a wanderer, a politician and a soldier (possibly a mercenary) and died in war.'

The logo on the top right is a detail from the Archaic capital of the Archilochos Monument. This marble Ionic capital was the top of the votive column of the Heroon of Archilochos and preserves the inscription referring to the erection of the monument by Dokimos in the 4th century B.C. The capital is now in the Museum of Paros.

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