Semonides of Amorgos (650–550 BCE)
Born 650 BCE, died 550 BCE.
Semonides of Amorgos (; Ancient Greek: Σημωνίδης ὁ Ἀμοργῖνος, variantly Σιμωνίδης; fl. 7th century BC) was a Greek iambic and elegiac poet who is believed to have lived during the seventh century BC. Fragments of his poetry survive as quotations in other ancient authors, the most extensive and well known of which is a satiric account of different types of women which is often cited in discussions of misogyny in Archaic Greece. The poem takes the form of a catalogue, with each type of woman represented by an animal whose characteristics—in the poet's scheme—are also characteristic of a large body of the female population. Other fragments belong to the registers of gnomic poetry and wisdom literature in which the Hesiodic Works and Days and the Theognidea are classed, and reflect a similarly pessimistic view of the human experience. There is also evidence that Semonides composed the sort of personal invective found in the work of his near contemporary iambographer Archilochus and the later Hipponax, but no surviving fragment can be securely attributed to such a poem.
Text from the Wikipedia article Semonides_of_Amorgos, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.