(s. vv.
Chron. Ol. 43. 1; Julian. i. p. 12d.; Lucian. Macrob. 26 ; Clinton,
F. H. vol. i. s. a. 611. vol. ii. s. aa. 556, 553.) Various attempts have been made to remove the slight discrepancies in
the above numbers ; but it appears better to be content with the general result, which they
clearly establish, that Stesichorus flourished at the beginning and during the first part of
the sixth century B. C.
There appears, at first sight, to be a discrepancy between these testimonies and the
statement of the Parian Marble (Ep. 51), that Stesichorus the poet came
into Greece at the same time at which Aeschylus gained his first tragic victory, in the
archonship of Philocrates, Ol. 73. 3, Ep. 74),
which states that " Stesichorus the second, of Himera, conquered at Athens in Ol. 102. 3,"
There are different statements respecting the country of Stesichorus. The prevailing account
was that he was born at Himera, and he is sometimes called simply " the poet of Himera; " but
others made him a native of Mataurus, or Metaurus, in the south of Italy (or, as some say, in
Sicily), which was a Locrian colony. (Steph. Byz. s. v.
l.c. ; Epig. Anon. apud
Brunck, Anal. vol. iii. p. 24, No. 33.)
According to Suidas, the poet had two brothers, a geometrician named Mamertinus, and a
legislator named Halianax. Other statements concerning his family, which rest upon very
doubtful authority, will be found in Kleine, pp. 15, 16.
His own name is said to have been at first Tisias, which was changed to
Stesichorus, because he first established a chorus for singing to the
harp. (Suid. s. v.
Ecphr. ap. Jacobs, Anth. Graec. vol. i. p. 42; Plin. H. N. 10.29.) He is
said to have been carefully educated at Catana, and afterwards to have enjoyed the friendship
of Phalaris, the tyrant of Agrigentum. The latter statement rests on no better authority than
the spurious letters of Phalaris; but there is nothing to prevent its being true, since it is
clear that Phalaris and Stesichorus were contemporaries. Many writers relate the fable of his
being miraculously struck with blindness after writing an attack upon Helen, and recovering
his sight when he had composed a Palinodia. (Dissert. sect. vii.) The statement that he travelled in
Greece appears to be supported by some passages in the fragments of his poems, by the known
usage of the early Grecian poets, and by the confused tradition preserved by Suidas, that he
came to Catana as an exile from Pallantium in Arcadia. For his connection with Catana, and his
burial there, we have several testimonies. Suidas says that he was buried by a gate of the
city, which was called after him the Stesichoreian gate, and that a splendid octagonal
monument was erected over his tomb, having eight pillars and eight sets of steps and eight
angles; whence, according to some was derived the name s.
v.
ad
Hom. pp. 1229, 1397.)
There are extant two ancient epitaphs on Stesichorus, the one in Greek, by Antipater
(Jacobs, Anth. Graec. vol. i. p. 328). the other in Latin (Ferrett. Mus. Lapidar. 5.36, p. 354). The people of Thermae, the town which
succeeded Himera, had a bronze statue of the poet, which Cicero describes as statua senilis, incurva, cum libro, summo at putant artificio facta (Verr. 2.35). This or another statue formed afterwards one of the treasures of the
gymnasium of Zeuxippus at Byzantium. (Christod. Ecphr. l.c.) There is
also a bronze medal of Himera, bearing on the reverse a man standing, holding a crown in his
right hand and a lyre in his left, which some suppose to have been struck in honour of
Stesichorus.
Among the ancient writers who celebrated his praises were Cicero (l.c.), Aristeides (Oral. vol. i. p. 152, ed. Steph.), Dionysius
(de Comp. Verb. vol. ii. p. 28, ed. Sylb.), Longinus (13.3), Dio
Chrysostom (p. 559d. ed. Morell.), and Synesius (Insom. p. 158b. ed.
Paris. 1612), nearly all of whom compare him to Homer in character and style. Quintilian's
testimony is, in general, to the same effect, but he blames the language of Stesichorus as
diffuse (10.1.62). Hermogenes, on the contrary, says that his numerous epithets add sweetness
to his style (de Form. Oral. ii. p. 409, ed. Laurent.). For other
testimonies see Kleine, sect. ix.
Stesichorus was one of the nine chiefs of lyric poetry recognized by the ancients He stands, with Alcman, at the head of one branch of the lyric art, the choral poetry of the Dorians; for, although he lived fifty years later than Alcman, yet the improvements made by the Himeraean poet on the chorus were so distinct from, and so far in advance of, those introduced by the Spartan, that he well deserves to share the honour, which some indeed, as we have seen, ascribed to him exclusively, of being the inventor of choral poetry. He was the first to break the monotony of the strophe and antistrophe by the introduction of the epode, and his metres were much more varied, and the structure of his strophes more elaborate, than those of Alcman. His odes contained all the essential elements of the perfect choral poetry of Pindar and the tragedians. For an analysis of his metres, see Kleine, sect. xi.
The subjects of his poems were chiefly heroic ; he transferred the subjects of the old epic poetry to the lyric form, dropping, of course, the continuous narrative, and dwelling on isolated adventures of his heroes. He also composed poems on other subjects. His extant remains are classified by Kleine under the following heads.
Of which we have the following titles :
Among which were,
titles,
Entitled
The dialect of Stesichorus was Dorian, with an intermixture of the epic. His nomes were mostly in the Dorian, but sometimes also in the Phrygian mode.
Poetae Minores Graeci ; and by Fr. Kleine, Berol.
1828, 8vo.
Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. pp. 151-157; Müller, Hist. of Lit. of Anc. Greece, pp. 197-203; Bernhardy, Grundriss d. Griech. Litt. vol. ii. pp. 471-477 ; Kleine, as above quoted.