 This work would belong to the genre of "ktisis" ("foundation") poetry which Mimnermus' elegiac "Smyrneis" might also have represented.Semonides' poetry, as is the case with archaic elegy and iambus in general, is composed in a literary Ionic dialect largely reminiscent of Homeric Greek and occasionally includes echoes of Homeric and Hesiodic poetry.The extant fragments are written in iambic trimeters, a stichic verse form also employed by Archilochus which would later be the primary meter of dialogue in tragedy.