Hipponax Quotes

“Hold my coat while I belt Boupalos in the eye.
I am ambidextrous and never miss a punch.”
― Hipponax

“Hermes, dear Hermes, Maia's son from Kyllene,
I pray to you, for I'm frozen and I shiver.
Give Hipponax a woolen overcoat, a Persian
cape, some sandals and felt slippers,
and sixty gold staters for his inner wall.

Give Hipponax a woolen overcoat. I tell you,
his teeth are rattling in his head!

But from you never even a shabby coat against the very cold
or slippers to keep my toes from freezing.”
― Hipponax

“Never yet has the blind god, Wealth,
come to my house and said 'Hipponax,
I'm giving you thirty silver minas
and much more.' No, he's far too tight.”
― Hipponax

“O Muse, sing to me of that sea-monster, Eurymedon's son,
whose stomach, like a knife, fattens on all it finds.
Tell of his dreadful end, and how by public order
the town will stone him to death beside the sterile sea.”
― Hipponax

“I will abandon my agonized soul to vice
if instantly you don't send a medimnos
of barley. From the flour I'll make a brew
to drink as medicine against my sorrows.”
― Hipponax

“In a Lydian voice she said, 'Come quick,
I will plug up your tight asshole.'
And she beat my balls with a branch
as though I were a scapegoat. I tripped,
and stuck on the gallows I suffered
a double torture: a branch lashed
my chest; someone wet me with cowshit
and my ass stank. Beetles came, drawn
by the stinking gook like summer flies.
They fell on me, shoved, filing their teeth
on my bones. The invasion complete,
I ached more than a Pygelian plague.”
― Hipponax