a famous Greek poet and musician, was, according to Herodotus, contemporary with Candaules and Gyges, kings of Lydia, who flourished about the 14th Olympiad, 724 years before Christ. He was born at Paros, one of the Cyclades. His father Telesicles was a man of high rank, and was chosen by his countrymen to consult the oracle at Delphi concerning the sending of a colony to Thasos. He is said, however, to have sullied his birth by an ignoble marriage with a slave called Enipo, of which alliance our poet-musician was the fruit. Archilocheus showed an early genius and attachment to poetry and music; but disgust with his country and the conduct of Lycurgus, who had promised him one of his daughters, induced him to emigrate to Thasos. In a battle against the Thracians of the continent, the young poet lost his buckler, though he saved his life by the help of his heels. "It is much easier," said he, "to get a new buckler than a new existence."

According to Plutarch, there was no bard of antiquity by whom the two arts of poetry and music were so much advanced as by Archilocheus. To him is attributed particularly the sudden transition from one rhythm to another of a different kind, and the manner of accompanying those irregular measures upon the lyre. Heroic poetry, in hexameter verse, seems to have been solely in use among the more ancient poets and musicians; and the transition from one rhythm to another, which lyric poetry required, was unknown to them; so that if Archilocheus were the first author of this mixture, he might with propriety be styled the Inventor of Lyric Poetry. To him is likewise ascribed the composition of the first iambic poetry in Greece, and the invention of Epodes. One of his hymns, written in honour of Hercules, brought him the acclamations of all Greece; for he sung it in full assembly at the Olympic games, and had the satisfaction of receiving from the judges the crown of victory consecrated to real merit. This hymn or ode was afterwards sung in honour of every victor at Olympia who had no poet to celebrate his particular exploits.

Archilocheus was slain by one Calondas or Corax, of the island of Naxos; who, though he did it in fight according to the laws of war, was driven out of the temple of Delphi, by command of the oracle, for having deprived of life a man consecrated to the Muses.

The names of Homer and Archilocheus were revered and celebrated in Greece, as the two most excellent poets the nation had ever produced. This appears from an epigram in the Anthology; and from Cicero, who ranks Archilocheus with poets of the first class, and in his Epistles tells us that the grammarian Aristophanes, the most rigid and scrupulous critic of his time, used to say that the longest poem of Archilocheus always appeared to him the most excellent. Some fragments of his poems have been preserved. These may be seen in the Poetae Lyrici Graeci, published by Th. Bergk, p. 467–500.