Margites Fragments by Homer of Colophon

The Margites is a lost comic poem, surviving only in fragments and testimonia. Ancient sources attribute it to Homer, though it is a pseudonymous composition of a later period, likely the 6th century BCE. The poem was composed in a mixture of hexameter and iambic trimeter verse and narrated the exploits of a foolish anti-hero named Margites, a man proverbially incompetent in all basic matters. It is classified as a mock-epic, parodying heroic conventions through its inept protagonist and its application of the elevated hexameter to low subject matter. The work is preserved only in brief quotations by later authors, such as Aristotle, and in testimonial references, with its unusual mixed metre consistently reported in antiquity. Aristotle cites the Margites in his Poetics as a starting-point for comedy, analogous to the Homeric epics for tragedy, granting it a place in classical literary theory. The poem represents an early example of Greek parody, and its protagonist became a proverbial figure for foolishness.