Hipponax Fr. 48 Dg. and the Eleusinian Kykeon

Hipponax fr. 48 Dg. has been understood in the past as a statement of the poet's poverty and hunger.1 More recently, however, scholars have pointed out the humor and ambiguity of the fragment, noting in particular the mock-heroic diction of the first two lines and the bathos that results when this sort of diction is applied to such an apparently trivial subject as one's own hunger.2