Hipponax was a Greek poet who lived 500 years before the Christian era. You think the Marquis de Sade had a dirty mind? Well you’re right, but Hipponax was right up there with him. Supposedly he was so offensive he got thrown out of Ephesos and wound up begging for a living in the city of Klazomenai. Here’s his The Miseries of Poetry, as translated from the Greek by Alexandra Papaditsas and Kent Johnson:
In Lydian tone she said, “Come hither, I will plug up
your tight asshole.” And she beat my egg sack with a sprig
of lilac as if I were a satyr. I fell backwards, breathing
heavy, and caught there by writhing vines I suffered
torture times two, and then some: A dried rose stem
lashed my man-tits; someone smeared me with cow’s
shit, and then my ass started stinking like Hades.
Dung beetles came, sucked there by the fetid
gook, like roan-filled flies. Bugs with their alphabet-eating
sounds: They covered me and shoved inward, burrowed
deep, filing their teeth without pity on my bones.
I hurt so bad, I might as well have had the Pygelian plague.
It might have been a fun date, right up until that bitch Poetry brought out the dung and the beetles…
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