Hipponax from Guillaume Rouillé's Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum

Hipponax (Ancient Greek: Ἱππῶναξ) of Ephesus and later Clazomenae was an Ancient Greek iambic poet who composed verses depicting the vulgar side of life in Ionian society in the sixth century BC. He was celebrated by ancient authors for his malicious wit (especially for his attacks on some contemporary sculptors, Bupalus and Athenis), and he was reputed to be physically deformed (a reputation that might have been inspired by the nature of his poetry).^[1] Little of his work survives despite its interest to Alexandrian scholars, who collected it in two or three books.^[2] He influenced Alexandrian poets searching for alternative styles and uses of language, such as Callimachus and Herodas,^[3] and his colourful reputation as an acerbic, social critic also made him a popular subject for verse, as in this epigram by Theocritus:

Here lies the poet Hipponax. If you are a scoundrel, do not approach the tomb; but if you are honest and from worthy stock, sit down in confidence and, if you like, fall asleep.^[4]

Ancient literary critics credited him with inventing literary parody^[5] and "lame" poetic meters suitable for vigorous abuse,^[6] as well as with influencing comic dramatists such as Aristophanes.^[7] His witty, abusive style appears for example in this quote by Herodian, who however was mainly interested in its linguistic aspects (many of the extant verses were preserved for us by lexicographers and grammarians interested in rare words):

τίς ὸμφαλητόμος σε τὸν διοπλῆγα

ἔψησε κἀπέλουσεν ἀσκαρίζοντα;

What navel-snipper wiped and washed you as you squirmed about, you crack-brained creature?

where 'navel-snipper' signifies a midwife.^[8]

Life[link]

Ancient authorities record the barest details about his life (sometimes contradicting each other) and his extant poetry is too fragmentary to support autobiographical interpretation (a hazardous exercise even at the best of times).^[9]

The Marmor Parium, only partially preserved in the relevant place, dates him to 541/40 BC, a date supported by Pliny The Elder in this comment on the theme of sculpture:

There lived in the island of Chios a sculptor Melas who was succeeded by his son Micciades and his grandson Achermus; the latter's sons, Bupalus and Athenis, had the very greatest fame in that art at the time of the poet Hipponax who was clearly alive in the 60th Olympiad (540-37). — Natural History 36.4.11

Archeological corroboration for these dates is found on the pedestal of a statue in Delos, inscribed with the names Micciades and Achermus and dated to 550-30.^[10] The poet therefore can be safely dated to the second half of the sixth century.^[11] According to Athenaeus, he was small, thin and surprisingly strong^[12] The Byzantine encyclopaedia Suda, recorded that he was expelled from Ephesus by the tyrants Athenagoras and Comas, then settled in Clazomenae, and that he wrote verses satirising Bupalis and Athenis because they made insulting likenesses of him.^[13] A scholiast commenting on Horace's Epodes recorded two differing accounts of the dispute with Bupalus, characterized however as "a painter in Clazomenae": Hipponax sought to marry Bupalus's daughter but was rejected because of his physical ugliness, and Bupalus portrayed him as ugly in order to provoke laughter. According to the same scholiast, Hipponax retaliated in verse so savagely that Bupalus hanged himself.^[14] Hipponax in that case closely resembles Archilochus of Paros, an earlier iambic poet, who reportedly drove a certain Lycambes and his daughters to hang themselves after he too was rejected in marriage.^[15] Such a coincidence invites scepticism.^[16] The comic poet Diphilus took the similarity between the two iambic poets even further, representing them as rival lovers of the poetess Sappho!^[17]

The life of Hipponax, as revealed in the poems, resembles a low-life saga centred on his private enmities, his amorous escapades and his poverty^[18] but it is probable he was another Petronius, depicting low-life characters while actually moving in higher social circles.^[19] In one fragment, Hipponax decries "Bupalus, the mother-fucker (μητροκοίτης) with Arete", the latter evidently being the mother of Bupalus, yet Arete is presented as performing fellatio on Hipponax in another fragment and, elsewhere, Hipponax complains "Why did you go to bed with that rogue Bupalus?", again apparently referring to Arete (whose name ironically is Greek for 'virtue').^[20][21] The poet is a man of action but, unlike Archilochus, who served as a warrior on Thasos, his battlefields are close to home:

Take my cloak, I'll hit Bupalus in the eye! For I have two right hands and I don't miss with my punches.^[22]

Hipponax's quarrelsome disposition is also illustrated in verses quoted by Tzetzes, where the bard abuses a painter called Mimnes, and advises him thus:

when you paint the serpent on the trireme's full-oared side, quit making it run back from the prow-ram to the pilot. What a disaster it will be and what a sensation — you low-born slave, you scum — if the snake should bite the pilot on the shin — fragment 28^[23]

Work[link]

Hipponax composed within the Iambus tradition which, in the work of Archilochus, a hundred years earlier, appears to have functioned as ritualized abuse and obscenity associated with the religious cults of Demeter and Dionysus but which, in Hipponax's day, seems rather to have had the purpose of entertainment. In both cases, the genre featured scornful abuse, a bitter tone and sexual permissiveness.^[24] Unlike Archilochus, however, he frequently refers to himself by name, emerging as a highly self-conscious figure, and his poetry is more narrow and insistently vulgar in scope:^[25] "with Hipponax, we are in an unheroic, in fact, a very sordid world",^[26] amounting to "a new conception of the poet's function."^[27]

He was considered the inventor of a peculiar metre, the scazon ("halting iambic" as Murray calls it^[28]) or choliamb, which substitutes a spondee or trochee for the final iambus of an iambic senarius, and is an appropriate form for the burlesque character of his poems. As an ancient scholar once put it:

"In his desire to abuse his enemies he shattered the meter, making it lame instead of straightforward, and unrhythmical, i.e. suitable for vigorous abuse, since what is rhythmical and pleasing to the ear would be more suitable for words of praise than blame." — Demetrius of Phalerum^[29]

Most of the surviving fragments are in choliambs but others feature trochaic tetrameter and even dactyls, the latter sometimes in combination with iambs and even on their own in dactylic hexameter, imitating epic poetry.^[30] Ancient scholars in fact credited him with inventing parody and Athenaeus quoted this diatribe against a glutton 'Euromedontiades', composed in dactylic hexameter in mock-heroic imitation of Homer's Odyssey:

Muse, sing of Eurymedontiades, sea-swilling Charybdis,

his belly a sharp-slicing knife, his table manners atrocious;

sing how, condemned by public decree, he will perish obscenely

under a rain of stones, on the beach of the barren salt ocean'' — fragment 128^{[31][nb 1]}

Most archaic poets (including the iambic poets Archilochus and Semonides) were influenced by the Ionian epic tradition, as represented in the work of Homer. Except for parody, Hipponax composed as if Homer never existed, avoiding not only heroic sentiment but even epic phrasing and vocabulary.^[32] He employed a form of Ionic Greek that included an unusually high proportion of Anatolian and particularly Lydian loanwords,^[33] as for example here where he addresses Zeus with the outlandish Lydian word for 'king' (nominative πάλμυς):

Ὦ Ζεῦ, πάτερ Ζεῦ, θεῶν Ὀλυμπίων πάλμυ,

τί μοὺκ ἔδωκας χρυσόν...

Zeus, father Zeus, sultan of the Olympian gods,

why have you not given me gold...? — fragment 38^[34]

Eating, defecating and fornicating are frequent themes and often they are employed together, as in fragment 92, a tattered papyrus which narrates a sexual encounter in a malodorous privy, where a Lydian-speaking woman performs some esoteric and obscene rites on the narrator, including beating his genitals with a fig branch and inserting something up his anus, provoking incontinence and finally an attack by dung beetles — a wild scene that possibly inspired the 'Oenothea' episode in Petronius's Satyricon.^[35]

"Hipponax remains a mystery. We have lost the matrix of these fascinating but puzzling fragments; ripped from their frame they leave us in doubt whether to take them seriously as autobiographical material (unlikely, but it has been done), as complete fiction (but there is no doubt that Bupalus and Athenis were real people), as part of a literary adaptation of some ritual of abuse (a komos or something similar), or as dramatic scripts for some abusive proto-comic performance. Whatever they were, they are a pungent reminder of the variety and vitality of archaic Greek literature and of how much we have lost." — B.M. Knox^[36]

The extant work also includes fragments of epodes (fr. 115-118) but the authorship is disputed by many modern scholars, who attribute them to Archilochus on various grounds, including for example the earlier poet's superior skill in invective and the fragments' resemblance to the tenth epode of Horace (an avowed imitator of Archilochus).^[37] Archilochus might also have been the source for an unusually beautiful line attributed to Hipponax^{[nb 2]} (a line that has also been described "as clear, melodious and spare as a line of Sappho"):^[38]

εἴ μοι γένοιτο παρθένος καλή τε καὶ τέρεινα — fr. 119

If only I might have a maiden who is both beautiful and tender.^[39]

Transmission and Reception[link]

Few fragments of his work survived through the Byzantine period despite his earlier popularity with Alexandrian poets and scholars. The Christian fathers disapproved of his abusive and obscene verses and he was also singled out as unedifying by Julian the Apostate, the pagan emperor, who instructed his priests to "abstain not only from impure and lascivious acts but also from speech and reading of the same character...No initiate shall read Archilochus or Hipponax or any of the authors who write the same kind of thing."^[40] Moreover Hipponax's Ionic dialect and his extensive use of foreign words made his work unsuited to an ancient education system that promoted Attic, the dialect of classical Athens. Today the longest fragment of complete, consecutive verses comprises only six lines.^[41] Archeologists working at Oxyrhynchus have added to the meagre collection with tattered scraps of papyrus, of which the longest, published in 1941, has parts of over fifty choliambics.^[42]

Old Comedy, as a medium for invective and abuse, was a natural successor to iambus from the viewpoint of Aristotle^[43] and Aristophanes, the master of Old Comedy, certainly borrowed inspiration from Hipponax: "Someone ought to give them a Bupalus or two on the jaw — that might shut them up for a bit" the men's chorus says about the women's chorus in Lysistrata,^[44] and "Wonderful poet, Hipponax!" Dionysus exclaims in Frogs, while trying to disguise the pain inflicted on himself during a flogging.^[45] A quote attributed to Hipponax by Stobaeus actually appears to have been composed by a New Comedy poet.^{[nb 3]}

Some Hipponactean sayings[link]

• "There are two days when a woman is a pleasure: the day one marries her and the day one buries her."^{[nb 4]}
• "drank like a lizard in a privy."^[46]
• "croaking like a raven in a privy."^[47]
• "sister of cow manure"^[48]
• "opening of filth...self-exposer" (βορβορόπιν...ἀνασυρτόπολιν)^{[nb 5]}
• "Mimnes, you who gape open all the way to the shoulders." (Μιμνῆ κατωμόχανε): ^{[nb 6]}
• "interprandial pooper" (μεσσηγυδορποχέστης)^{[nb 7]}

Notes[link]

1. ^ 'Euromedontiades' means 'son of Euromedon', who was a king of giants mentioned by Homer (Odyssey 7.58f.); Charybdis is also mentioned by Homer (Odyssey 12.104); Aristotle named Hegemon of Thasos as the founder of parody (Poetics 1448a12) but he meant thereby that Hegemon was the first to make parody a profession — Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), notes 4, 6, 8 page 459
2. ^ The Hipponax fragment 119 might have been a contamination of the Archilochus fragments 118 (εἴ μοι γένοιτο χεῖρα Νεοβούλης θιγεῖν / Would that I might thus touch Neoboule on her hand) and 196a.6 (καλὴ τέρεινα παρθένος / a beautiful, tender maiden) — Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), note 1 for fr. 119 page 159
3. ^ "The best marriage for a sensible man is to get a woman's good character as a wedding gift: for this dowry alone preserves the household..." — fr. 182, translated and annotated by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 497
4. ^ (Attribution to Hipponax is not accepted by all scholars — Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 405
5. ^ Descriptions of a woman, recorded by Suda:
   "Hipponax calls her 'opening of filth' as one who is impure, from βορβορος (filth), and 'self-exposer' from ἀνασύρεσθαι (to pull up one's clothes)." — cited and translated by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 467
6. ^ Mimnes was a painter, here addressed hyperbolically as a sodomite (wide-arse, or ευρύπρωκτος, euryproktos, in this case gaping all the way to the shoulders) — cited and translated by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 375
7. ^ A comic word coined by Hipponax, defined by Suetonius in On Defamatory Words as "...one who often retires to defecate in the midst of a meal so that he may fill himself up again." — cited and translated by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 437

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Easterling, P.E. (Series Editor), Bernard M.W. Knox (Editor), Cambridge History of Classical Literature, v.I, Greek Literature, 1985. ISBN 0-521-21042-9, cf. Chapter 5, "Elegy and Iambus", pp. 158–164 on Hipponax.
• Murray, Gilbert, A History of Ancient Greek Literature, 1897. Cf. p. 88
• L. Hawkins, Hipponax and Misogyny in Ancient Greece, Ancient History Encyclopedia.

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon (May 1915) by George Charles Beresford
Born	Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886-09-08)8 September 1886 Matfield, Kent, England
Died	1 September 1967(1967-09-01) (aged 80) Heytesbury, Wiltshire
Occupation	Soldier, Poet, Diarist, Memoirist, Journalist
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Cambridge University
Period	Early 20th century
Genres	Poetry, Fiction, Biography
Notable work(s)	The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston
Influences E. M. Forster, Henry Vaughan, Robert Graves, Edmund Gosse, Thomas Hardy
Influenced Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves
Signature

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE MC (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English poet, author and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a vainglorious war.^[1] He later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston Trilogy".

Early life and education[link]

Siegfried Sassoon was born and grew up in the neo-gothic mansion named "Weirleigh" (after its builder, Harrison Weir), in Matfield, Kent,^[2] to a Jewish father and an Anglo-Catholic mother. His father, Alfred Ezra Sassoon (1861–1895), son of Sassoon David Sassoon, was a member of the wealthy Baghdadi Jewish Sassoon merchant family. For marrying outside the faith he was disinherited. His mother, Theresa, belonged to the Thornycroft family, sculptors responsible for many of the best-known statues in London—her brother was Sir Hamo Thornycroft. There was no German ancestry in Siegfried's family; his mother named him Siegfried because of her love of Wagner's operas. His middle name, Loraine, was the surname of a clergyman with whom she was friendly.

Siegfried was the second of three sons, the others being Michael and Hamo. When he was four years old his parents separated. During his father's weekly visits to the boys, Theresa locked herself in the drawing room. In 1895 Alfred Sassoon died of tuberculosis.

Sassoon was educated at The New Beacon Preparatory School, Sevenoaks, Kent; at Marlborough College, Marlborough, Wiltshire (where he was a member of Cotton House), and at Clare College, Cambridge, where from 1905 to 1907 he read history. He went down from Cambridge without a degree and spent the next few years hunting, playing cricket and writing verse: some he published privately. Since his father had been disinherited from the Sassoon fortune for marrying a non-Jew, Siegfried had only a small private fortune that allowed him to live modestly without having to earn a living (however, he would later be left a generous legacy by an aunt, Rachel Beer, allowing him to buy the great estate of Heytesbury House in Wiltshire.^[3] His first published success, The Daffodil Murderer (1913), was a parody of John Masefield's The Everlasting Mercy. Robert Graves, in Good-Bye to All That describes it as a "parody of Masefield which, midway through, had forgotten to be a parody and turned into rather good Masefield."

Sassoon expressed his opinions on the political situation before the onset of the First World War—"France was a lady, Russia was a bear, and performing in the county cricket team was much more important than either of them". Sassoon wanted to play for Kent County Cricket Club; Kent Captain Frank Marchant was a neighbour of Sassoon. Siegfried often turned out for Bluehouses at the Nevill Ground, where he sometimes played alongside Arthur Conan Doyle. He also played cricket for his house at Marlborough College, once taking 7 wickets for 18 runs. Although an enthusiast, Sassoon was not good enough to play for Kent, but he played cricket for Matfield, and later for the Downside Abbey team, continuing into his seventies.^[2]

War service[link]

The Western Front: Military Cross[link]

Motivated by patriotism, Sassoon joined the British Army just as the threat of World War I was realised, and was in service with the Sussex Yeomanry on the day the United Kingdom declared war (4 August 1914). He broke his arm badly in a riding accident and was put out of action before even leaving England, spending the spring of 1915 convalescing. At around this time his younger brother Hamo was killed in the Gallipoli Campaign.^[4] (Rupert Brooke, whom Siegfried had briefly met, died on the way there.) Hamo's death hit Siegfried very hard. He was commissioned into 3rd Battalion (Special Reserve), Royal Welch Fusiliers as a second lieutenant on 29 May 1915,^[5] and in November was sent to the 1st Battalion in France. There he met Robert Graves and they became close friends. United by their poetic vocation, they often read and discussed one another's work. Though this did not have much perceptible influence on Graves's poetry, his views on what may be called 'gritty realism' profoundly affected Sassoon's concept of what constituted poetry. He soon became horrified by the realities of war, and the tone of his writing changed completely: where his early poems exhibit a Romantic, dilettantish sweetness, his war poetry moves to an increasingly discordant music, intended to convey the ugly truths of the trenches to an audience hitherto lulled by patriotic propaganda. Details such as rotting corpses, mangled limbs, filth, cowardice and suicide are all trademarks of his work at this time, and this philosophy of 'no truth unfitting' had a significant effect on the movement towards Modernist poetry.

Sassoon's periods of duty on the Western Front were marked by exceptionally brave actions, including the single-handed, but vainglorious, capture of a German trench in the Hindenburg Line. Armed with grenades he scattered 60 German soldiers^[6]:

He went over with bombs in daylight, under covering fire from a couple of rifles, and scared away the occupants. A pointless feat, since instead of signalling for reinforcements, he sat down in the German trench and began reading a book of poems which he had brought with him. When he went back he did not even report. Colonel Stockwell, then in command, raged at him. The attack on Mametz wood had been delayed for two hours because British patrols were still reported to be out. 'British patrols' were Siegfried and his book of poems. 'I'd have got you a D.S.O., if you'd only shown more sense,' stormed Stockwell.^[7]

Sassoon's bravery was inspiring to the extent that soldiers of his company said that they felt confident only when they were accompanied by him.^[8] He often went out on night-raids and bombing patrols and demonstrated ruthless efficiency as a company commander. Deepening depression at the horror and misery the soldiers were forced to endure produced in Sassoon a paradoxically manic courage, and he was nicknamed "Mad Jack" by his men for his near-suicidal exploits. On 27 July 1916 he was awarded the Military Cross; the citation read:

2nd Lt. Siegfried Lorraine [sic] Sassoon, 3rd (attd. 1st) Bn., R. W. Fus. For conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy's trenches. He remained for 1½ hours under rifle and bomb fire collecting and bringing in our wounded. Owing to his courage and determination all the killed and wounded were brought in.^[9]

Robert Graves described Sassoon as engaging in suicidal feats of bravery. Sassoon was also later (unsuccessfully) recommended for the Victoria Cross.^[10]

War opposition: Craiglockhart[link]

Despite his decoration and reputation, he decided in 1917 to make a stand against the conduct of the war. One of the reasons for his violent anti-war feeling was the death of his friend, David Cuthbert Thomas (called "Dick Tiltwood" in the Sherston trilogy). He would spend years trying to overcome his grief.

At the end of a spell of convalescent leave, Sassoon declined to return to duty; instead, encouraged by pacifist friends such as Bertrand Russell and Lady Ottoline Morrell, he sent a letter to his commanding officer, titled Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration. Forwarded to the press and read out in Parliament by a sympathetic MP, the letter was seen by some as treasonous ("I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority") or at best condemnatory of the war government's motives ("I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest"^[11]). Rather than court-martial Sassoon, the Under-Secretary of State for War, Ian Macpherson decided that he was unfit for service and had him sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh, where he was officially treated for neurasthenia ("shell shock").^[10] Before declining to return to active service he had thrown the ribbon from his Military Cross into the river Mersey.

The novel Regeneration, by Pat Barker, is a fictionalised account of this period in Sassoon's life, and was made into a film starring James Wilby as Sassoon and Jonathan Pryce as W. H. R. Rivers, the psychiatrist responsible for Sassoon's treatment. Rivers became a kind of surrogate father to the troubled young man, and his sudden death in 1922 was a major blow to Sassoon.

At Craiglockhart, Sassoon met Wilfred Owen, a fellow poet who would eventually exceed him in fame. It was thanks to Sassoon that Owen persevered in his ambition to write better poetry. A manuscript copy of Owen's Anthem for Doomed Youth containing Sassoon's handwritten amendments survives as testimony to the extent of his influence and is currently on display at London's Imperial War Museum. To all intents and purposes, Sassoon became to Owen "Keats and Christ and Elijah"; surviving documents demonstrate clearly the depth of Owen's love and admiration for him. Both men returned to active service in France, but Owen was killed in 1918. Sassoon, despite all this, was promoted to lieutenant, and having spent some time out of danger in Palestine, eventually returned to the Front. On 13 July 1918, Sassoon was almost immediately wounded again—by friendly fire after he was shot in the head by a fellow British soldier who had mistaken him for a German near Arras, France. As a result, he spent the remainder of the war in Britain. By this time he had been promoted acting captain. He relinquished his commission on health grounds on 12 March 1919, but was allowed to retain the rank of captain.^[12] After the war, Sassoon was instrumental in bringing Owen's work to the attention of a wider audience. Their friendship is the subject of Stephen MacDonald's play, Not About Heroes.

Post-war[link]

Green plaque on the site of Sassoon's former home in Tufton Street, Westminster, London

A handwritten letter to Sassoon from Arthur Quiller-Couch, about the possibility of Quiller-Couch writing for The Daily Herald.

Editor and novelist[link]

The war had brought Sassoon into contact with men from less advantaged backgrounds, and he had developed socialist sympathies. Having lived for a period at Oxford, where he spent more time visiting literary friends than studying, he dabbled briefly in the politics of the Labour movement, and in 1919 took up a post as literary editor of the socialist Daily Herald. During his period at the Herald, Sassoon was responsible for employing several eminent names as reviewers, including E. M. Forster and Charlotte Mew, and commissioned original material from "names" like Arnold Bennett and Osbert Sitwell. His artistic interests extended to music. While at Oxford he was introduced to the young William Walton, whose friend and patron he became. Walton later dedicated his Portsmouth Point overture to Sassoon in recognition of his financial assistance and moral support.

Sassoon later embarked on a lecture tour of the USA, as well as travelling in Europe and throughout Britain. He acquired a car, a gift from the publisher Frankie Schuster, and became renowned among his friends for his lack of driving skill, but this did not prevent him making full use of the mobility it gave him.

Sassoon was a great admirer of the Welsh poet Henry Vaughan. On a visit to Wales in 1923, he paid a pilgrimage to Vaughan's grave at Llansanffraid, Powys, and there wrote one of his best-known peacetime poems, At the Grave of Henry Vaughan. The deaths of three of his closest friends, Edmund Gosse, Thomas Hardy and Frankie Schuster (the publisher), within a short space of time, came as another serious setback to his personal happiness.

At the same time, Sassoon was preparing to take a new direction. While in America, he had experimented with a novel. In 1928, he branched out into prose, with Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, the anonymously-published first volume of a fictionalised autobiography, which was almost immediately accepted as a classic, bringing its author new fame as a humorous writer. The book won the 1928 James Tait Black Award for fiction. Sassoon followed it with Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and Sherston's Progress (1936). In later years, he revisited his youth and early manhood with three volumes of genuine autobiography, which were also widely acclaimed. These were The Old Century, The Weald of Youth and Siegfried's Journey.

Personal life[link]

Siegfried Sassoon's gravestone in Mells churchyard

Sassoon, having matured greatly as a result of his military service, continued to seek emotional fulfilment, initially in a succession of love affairs with men, including the actor Ivor Novello; Novello's former lover, the actor Glen Byam Shaw; German aristocrat Prince Philipp of Hesse; the writer Beverley Nichols; and an effete aristocrat, the Hon. Stephen Tennant.^[13] Only the last of these made a permanent impression, though Shaw remained his close friend throughout his life. In September 1931, Sassoon rented and began to live at Fitz House, Teffont Magna, Wiltshire.^[14] In December 1933, to many people's surprise, he married Hester Gatty, who was many years his junior; this led to the birth of a child, something which he had long craved. This child, their only child, George (1936–2006) became a scientist, linguist and author, and was adored by Siegfried, who wrote several poems addressed to him. However, the marriage broke down after World War II, Sassoon apparently unable to find a compromise between the solitude he enjoyed and the companionship he craved.

Separated from his wife in 1945, Sassoon lived in seclusion at Heytesbury in Wiltshire, although he maintained contact with a circle which included E. M. Forster and J. R. Ackerley. One of his closest friends was the young cricketer Dennis Silk. He formed a close friendship with Vivien Hancock, headmistress of Greenways School at Ashton Gifford, which his son George attended. The relationship provoked Hester to make some strong accusations against Vivien Hancock, who responded with the threat of legal action.^[15] Sassoon was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1951 New Year Honours.^[16] Towards the end of his life, he converted to Roman Catholicism. He had hoped that Ronald Knox, a Roman Catholic priest and writer whom he admired, would instruct him in the faith, but Knox was too ill to do so.^[17] The priest Sebastian Moore was chosen to instruct him instead, and Sassoon was admitted to the faith at Downside Abbey, close to his home.^[18] He also paid regular visits to the nuns at Stanbrook Abbey, and the abbey press printed commemorative editions of some of his poems. During this time he also became interested in the supernatural, and joined the Ghost Club.

Siegfried Sassoon died one week before his 81st birthday, of stomach cancer, and is buried at St Andrew's Church, Mells, Somerset, close to Ronald Knox.

Legacy[link]

On 11 November 1985, Sassoon was among sixteen Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.^[19] The inscription on the stone was written by friend and fellow War poet Wilfred Owen. It reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."^[20]

In 2003 saw the publication of Memorial Tablet, an authorised audio CD of readings by Sassoon recorded during the late 1950s. These included extracts from Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and The Weald of Youth, as well as several war poems including Attack, The Dug-Out, At Carnoy and Died of Wounds, and postwar works. The CD also included comment on Sassoon by three of his Great War contemporaries: Edmund Blunden, Edgell Rickword and Henry Williamson.^[21]

Siegfried Sassoon's only child, George Sassoon, died of cancer in 2006. George had three children, two of whom were killed in a car crash in 1996. His daughter by his first marriage, Kendall Sassoon, is Patron-in-Chief of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship, and a Lady Associate Royal Welch Fusilier.

In May 2007 Sassoon's Military Cross was put up for sale by his family. It was bought by the Royal Welch Fusiliers for display at their museum in Caernarfon.^[22]

In June 2009, the University of Cambridge announced plans to purchase a valuable archive of Sassoon's papers from his family, to be added to the university library's existing Sassoon collection.^[23] On 4 November 2009 it was reported that this purchase would be supported by £550,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, meaning that the University still needed to raise a further £110,000 on top of the money already received in order to meet the full £1.25 million asking price.^[24] The funds were successfully raised, and in December 2009 it was announced that the University had received the papers. Included in the collection are war diaries kept by Sassoon while he served on the Western Front and in Palestine, a draft of "A Soldier’s Declaration" (1917), notebooks from his schooldays, and post-war journals.^[25] Other items in the collection include love letters to his wife Hester, and photographs and letters from other writers.^[26] Sassoon was an undergraduate at the university, as well as being made an honorary fellow of Clare College, and the collection will be housed at the Cambridge University Library. As well as private individuals, funding came from the Monument Trust, the JP Getty Jr Trust, and Sir Siegmund Warburg's Voluntary Settlement.^[27]

In 2010, Dream Voices: Siegfried Sassoon, Memory and War, a major exhibition of Sassoon's life and archive, was held at Cambridge University.^[28]

Several of Sassoon's poems have been set to music, some during his lifetime, notably by Cyril Rootham.

Books[link]

Poetry collections[link]

• The Daffodil Murderer (John Richmond: 1913)
• The Old Huntsman (Heinemann: 1917)
• The General (Denmark Hill Hospital, April 1917)
• Does it Matter? (written: 1917)
• Counter-Attack and Other Poems (Heinemann: 1918)
• The Hero [Henry Holt, 1918]
• Picture-Show (Heinemann: 1919)
• War Poems (Heinemann: 1919)
• Aftermath (Heinemann: 1920)
• Recreations (privately printed: 1923)
• Lingual Exercises for Advanced Vocabularians (privately printed: 1925)
• Selected Poems (Heinemann: 1925)
• Satirical Poems (Heinemann: 1926)
• The Heart's Journey (Heinemann: 1928)
• Poems by Pinchbeck Lyre (Duckworth: 1931)
• The Road to Ruin (Faber and Faber: 1933)
• Vigils (Heinemann: 1935)
• Rhymed Ruminations (Faber and Faber: 1940)
• Poems Newly Selected (Faber and Faber: 1940)
• Collected Poems (Faber and Faber: 1947)
• Common Chords (privately printed: 1950/1951)
• Emblems of Experience (privately printed: 1951)
• The Tasking (privately printed: 1954)
• Sequences (Faber and Faber: 1956)
• Lenten Illuminations (Downside Abbey: 1959)
• The Path to Peace (Stanbrook Abbey Press: 1960)
• Collected Poems 1908-1956 (Faber and Faber: 1961)
• The War Poems ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (Faber and Faber: 1983)

Prose[link]

• Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (Faber & Gwyer: 1928)
• Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (Faber and Faber: 1930)
• Sherston's Progress (Faber and Faber: 1936)
• Complete Memoirs of George Sherston (Faber and Faber: 1937)
• The Old Century and seven more years (Faber and Faber: 1938)
• On Poetry (University of Bristol Press: 1939)
• The Weald of Youth (Faber and Faber: 1942)
• Siegfried's Journey (Faber and Faber: 1946)
• Meredith (Constable: 1948) - Biography of George Meredith

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Felicitas Corrigan Siegfried Sassoon: Poet's Pilgrimage (1973) ISBN 0-575-01721-X (A collection of Sassoon's diary-entries and correspondence marking his gradual spiritual development towards Roman Catholicism.)
• Jean Moorcroft Wilson Siegfried Sassoon: The Making of a War Poet (1998) ISBN 0-7156-2822-4
• Jean Moorcroft Wilson Siegfried Sassoon: The Journey from the Trenches (2003) ISBN 0-7156-2971-9
• John Stuart Roberts Siegfried Sassoon (1999) ISBN 1-86066-151-3
• Max Egremont Siegfried Sassoon (2005) ISBN 0-330-37526-1
• Siegfried's Journal: the journal of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship [1]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Siegfried Sassoon

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Siegfried Sassoon

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Siegfried Sassoon

• Works by or about Siegfried Sassoon at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Works by Siegfried Sassoon at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
• Profile at Poetry Foundation
• Profile at Poetry Archive. Biography and poems written and audio
• The Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship
• BBC: In our time. (Audio discussion 45 mins) with bibliography and links. BBC interview 1 January 1967 (Audio, 7 mins)
• WGBH Forum Network lecture given by Sassoon biographer Max Egremont (Audio and video, 1hr)

Archive[link]

• Siegfried Sassoon collection of papers, circa 1905-1975, bulk (1915-1951) (669 items), New York Public Library.
• Archival material relating to Siegfried Sassoon listed at the UK National Register of Archives
• Papers of Siegfried Sassoon, Cambridge University Library
• Sassoon in the Great War Archive, Oxford University/JISC.
• BBC Audio slideshow. Sassoon's papers at Cambridge University Library.
• Elizabeth Whitcomb Houghton Collection, Sassoon archive

Sindi warrior statue. Limestone, I A.D. Kerch Arcaeology Museum.

Ancient terracotta vessels unearthed at the Sindian necropolis near Phanagoria. The photograph by Prokudin-Gorskii (ca. 1912).

The Sindi (Greek: Σινδοί, Herod. iv. 28) were an ancient people in the Taman Peninsula and the adjacent coast of the Pontus Euxinus (Black Sea), in the district called Sindica, which spread between the modern towns of Temryuk and Novorossiysk (Herod. l. c.; Hipponax. p. 71, ed. Welck.; Hellanic. p. 78; Dionys. Per. 681; Steph. B. p. 602; Amm. Marc. xxii. 8. § 41, &c.). Their name is variously written, and Mela calls them Sindones (ii. 19), Lucian (Tox. 55), Sindianoi.

Strabo describes them as living along the Palus Maeotis, and among the Maeotae, Dandarii, Toreatae, Agri, Arrechi, Tarpetes, Obidiaceni, Sittaceni, Dosci, and Aspurgiani, among others. (Strab. xi. 2. 11). The Great Soviet Encyclopedia classes them as a tribe of the Maeotae. In the 5th century BC, the Sindi were subjugated by the Bosporan Kingdom. They left multiple tumuli which, when excavated by Soviet archaeologists, revealed that their culture was heavily Hellenized. The Sindi were assimilated by the Sarmatians in the first centuries AD.

Besides the seaport of Sinda, other towns belonging to the same people were Hermonassa, Gorgippia, and Aborace. (Strab. xi. 2, et. seq.) They had a monarchical form of government (Polyaen, viii. 55), and Gorgippia was the residence of their kings. (Strab. l. c.) Nicolaus Damascenus (p. 160, ed. Orell.) mentions a peculiar custom which they had of throwing upon the grave of a deceased person as many fish as the number of enemies whom he had overcome.

References[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1854–57). "^{article name needed}". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray. 
• Strabo's book 11 on-line
• (French) Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers
• Trubachov, Oleg N., 1999: Indoarica, Nauka, Moscow.