ἡ δὲ μελίσσης
οἰκόνομός τ’ ἀγαθὴ καὶ ἐπίσταται ἐργάζεσθαι·
ἧς εὔχου, φιλ’ ἑταῖρε, λαχεῖν γάμον ἱμερόεντα.
[Phoc. Fr. 3.]
ἱμερόεντα sounds to a modern ear almost like bitter irony.
[23] Nor, for that matter, is the Hetaera, whom later writers manage so to idealise, treated with any more respect or courtesy than the wife. Cp. Archil. Fr. 142, 184; Hippon. Fr. 110, 111. In curious contrast to what may be called the ‘wife-poetry’ of the early Greeks is the pretty picture in Hesiod (Op. 517, seqq.) of the unmarried girl, sitting at home, in every sense of the words κακῶν ἄπειρος. But strangest of all is the touch where, falling unconsciously into a manner of speech that dated from a very different social state, he calls her
οὔπω ἔργ’ εἰδυῖα πολυχρύσου (!) Ἀφροδίτης.
[24] “But even these are as nothing compared to the real gush of feeling when he describes his youthful passions, his love for Neobule, passing the Homeric love of women. Here he has anticipated Sappho and Alcaeus, &c.”—Mahaffy, Class. Gr. Lit. i. p. 160.
[25] Perhaps Glaucus, for there is at least as much reason for supposing that Glaucus was the object of Archilochus’ affection as that he was the object of his scorn. To see in him a prototype of the Egnatius of Catullus, as, for instance, Lafaye does (Catulle et ses Modèles, p. 29), is quite unwarranted by any evidence; for the epithet κεροπλάστης of Fr. 57 is not necessarily derogatory, while the tone of such passages as Fr. 54, 70, is certainly not that of invective.
[26] Fr. 100-3, 106-7, 109-10, 116.