Pigres of Halicarnassus

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Pigres, a native of Halicarnassus, either the brother or the son of the celebrated Artemisia, satrap of Caria. He is spoken of by the Suda (s.v. where, however, he makes the mistake of conflating Artemisia the wife of Mausolus with Artemisia the advisor of Xerxes in the Histories Herodotus) as the author of the Margites, and the Batrachomyomachia. The latter poem is also attributed to him by Plutarch (de Herod. malign. 43. p. 873f), and was probably his work. One of his performances was a very singular one, namely, inserting a pentameter line after each hexameter in the Iliad, thus: —

Mênin aeide thea Pêlêiadeô Achilêos;

Mousa gar su pasês peirat' echeis sophiês.

Bode (Gesch. der Hellen. Dichtkunst. i. p. 279) believes that the Margites, though not composed by Pigres, suffered some alterations at his hands, and in that altered shape passed down to posterity. Some suppose that the iambic lines, which alternated with the hexameters in the Margites, were inserted by Pigres. He was the first poet, apparently, who introduced the iambic trimeter. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. i. p. 519, &c.)

[edit] References

• Pigres from Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1867), from which this article was originally derived
• Suda On Line: Pigres