It is possible that the iambic metre existed before the date of Archilochus. An old myth connects it with the festivals of Demeter. Demeter, it is said, could not be made to laugh after her daughter's loss, until a nymph, Iambé, by her jests and sarcasms, raised a smile upon her lips. This legend proves that the Greeks referred the origin of the iambic to those jokes and gibes which were common in the feasts of Demeter, and from the licentious mirth of which the satiric element of comedy was developed. The iambic is nearest in cadence to the language of common life; it is, therefore, the fit vehicle for dialogue, and for all poetry that deals with common and domestic topics. Again, it is essentially rapid in movement: Horace speaks of _celeres iambi_ (swift iambi); Hadrian calls them #lyssôntes iamboi# (raging iambi): this rapidity fitted them for sharp attack and swift satiric pungency. Admitting, then, that the metre may have been employed in early attempts at colloquial satire, Archilochus, perceiving its capacities, fashioned it to suit the purpose of his own consummate art. He was celebrated among the ancients for having perfected the metres belonging to what they called the #diplasion genos#, as distinguished from the #ison genos#--that is to say, the iambic and trochaic rhythms, in which either the arsis or the thesis has twice the time of the other. In a trochee the first syllable equals two of the same time as the second; in an iamb this order is reversed; whereas the dactyl and the spondee, on which the hexameter and elegiac metres are based, are feet each member of which has the same time, the two shorts of the dactyl being equivalent to the second long of the spondee. Archilochus, if not absolutely the inventor, was the creator of these two metres, the iambic and trochaic, as truly as Homer was the creator of the heroic measure. No proof of the power of his genius can be greater than the fact that, whatever changes may have been subsequently wrought in the iambic and trochaic metres, they remained substantially the same as those which Archilochus employed, whether afterwards adapted to satire, tragedy, or comedy. While speaking of Archilochus as a technical artist, it ought to be mentioned that he gave further proof of his originality by elaborating the metrical systems which the Greeks called Asynartêtes, or unconnected. These consisted of a mixture of dactylic and anapæstic with trochaic feet. The ithyphallic, which was marked by a succession of three trochees at the end of the line, was the most distinguished.