Insult Poem

"This poem is by Archilochos, the first Western lyric poet and a contemporary of Homer. What's remarkable about him, especially for a lyric poet, is that he was a mercenary soldier by trade. Practically everything of his that survives is a fragment, but this one seems to be complete. One of the big genres for Greek lyric poetry was the insult poem, much like a Rap tirade."

Thanks Stephen Ellis for sending the poem & info! I love this genre. I am going to embrace it, I feel it might be a good one for me.


Swept overboard, unconscious in the breakers,
strangled with seaweed, may you wake up in a gelid
surf, your teeth, already cracked into the shingle,
now set rattling by the wind, while facedown,
helpless as a poisoned cur, on all fours you puke
brine reeking of dead fish. May those you meet,
barbarians as ugly as their souls are hateful
treat you to the moldy wooden bread of slaves
And may you, with your split teeth sunk in that,
smile, then, the way you did when speaking as my friend.