The distinction among various poetic genres is usually clearer musically than metrically. Elegy was often accompanied by the flute and was the only genre that required two executants. On the contrary, because the epic was sung with the accompaniment of the guitar and monody with the accompaniment of the lyre or lute, it could be presented by only one executant. Although the word elegy comes from elegos, lament, the elegiac metre was also used for poetry of a totally different context.
Iamb was initially poetry related to Dionysus, and as a word perhaps it has a "pre-hellenic" origin. The metre that is usually used is iambic trimeter or trochaic tetrameter and that is enough for a poem to be characterized as an iamb. Its context, though, varies and its Ionic version is usually a reference in the first person.


Archilochus of Paros is undoubtedly the most important of the lyric poets and his posthumous fame was great. He occupied a special position in the education of the classical period, next to Homer and Hesiod. He lived an eventful and disreputable life, most probably as a mercenary and he was killed in a battle by someone named Calondas of Naxos. His life was connected to chronologically historical events, the kingdom of Gyges (687-52 B.C.), the destruction of Magnesia by the Cimmerians (652 B.C.) and the total eclipse of the sun in 648 B.C., and thus we are in a position to date his work almost accurately.
Although he depended a lot on epic, he introduced some speech innovations and used various metres, a fact that reveals the existence of a developing poetic tradition before him. Archilochus often used the first person and led some scholars to think that his poetry was autobiographical. Apparently Archilochus played certain roles, among which were those of the professional soldier and the lover, a usual phenomenon in the folk culture and the oral tradition.

Contemporary to Archilochus was Callinus of Ephesus. Only small extracts survive from his work and the most interesting ones are the military songs. The material of the tradition, such as the borrowed comparisons from Homer's work, develop a vividness and an emotional directness in Callinus' poetry.
During that period Tyrtaeus lived in Laconia. All his surviving work is in elegiac form and is inspired by the events of the Messenian war, which marked his generation. In that he praises military virtue and the values that characterize Spartan community such as responsibility, discipline and loyalty.


One generation younger was Mimnermus of Colophon (end of the 7th century B.C.). He is mainly referred to as a erotic poet, but in the surviving extracts of his work we also meet an interesting version of the Argonautic expedition, as well as the earliest evidence about Ionic migration and the settlement of Colophon from Pylos.
Around the middle of the 6th century B.C. Theognes stood out, about whom Plato informs us that he was a citizen of Megara in Sicily. What is extraordinary about Theognes' work is that it survived through the centuries not as fragments but as a whole, into which many alien elements have intruded. Theognes' language reveals its adaptation to a new world, where the Homeric standards of the declining aristocracy are not recognisable any more. The joys of life carry special weight in his work and the values that he praises are beauty, youth, male companionship, fame and the pleasures of symposia.


Among those who wrote elegies and iambs in thr Archaic period, Solon the Athenian, Semonides of Amorgos and Hipponax of Ephesus are notable. Simonides was known in antiquity for his satirical poems, but quite often he was mistakenly identified with Simonides of Ceos, who preceded him.

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