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Two happy days a woman brings a man: the first, when he marries her; the second, when he bears her to the grave. Hipponax, On Women

Hipponax of Ephesus (Ιππώναξ ο Εφέσιος) a Greek iambic poet. Expelled from Ephesus in 540 BC by the tyrant Athenagoras, he took refuge in Clazomenae, where he spent the rest of his life in poverty. His deformed flgure and malicious disposition exposed him to the caricature of the Chian sculptors Bupalus and Athenis, upon whom he revenged himself by issuing against them a series of satires. They are said to have hanged themselves like Lycambes and his daughters when assailed by Archilochus, the model and predecessor of Hipponax.

His coarseness of thought and feeling, his rude vocabulary, his want of grace and taste, and his numerous allusions to matters of merely local interest prevented his becoming a favourite in Attica. He was considered the inventor of parody and of a peculiar metre, the scazon or choliamb, which substitutes a spondee for the final iambus of an iambic senarius, and is an appropriate form for the burlesque character of his poems.

Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature , Hackett Publishing Company; Reprint edition (November, 1996)

Pliny N. H. xxxvi. II

Before their time the sculptor Melas had already lived on the island of Chios, and after him his son Mikkiades and his grandson Archermos, whose sons Bupalos and Athenis were the most famous masters of their craft in the time of the poet Hipponax, who is known to have lived in the 6oth Olympiad (540 B.C.). If their line is traced back to the great-grand- father, it will be found that the art took its rise at the beginning of the Olympiads.

Hipponax was remarkable for the ugliness of his face, for which reason they exposed his portrait in wanton mockery to jesting crowds, until Hipponax in indignation turned the weapons of his bitterest satire against them with such effect that as some believe he drove them to hang themselves. This is not the case : for they afterwards made many statues in the neighbouring islands, as for example in Delos, where their work bore a metrical inscription, stating that Chios was famed not only for its vines but also for the works of the sons of Archermos. The people of Lasos display an Artemis fashioned by their hands ;