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STESICHORUS (c. 640–555 B.C.)

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Originally appearing in Volume V25, Page 903 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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STESICHORUS (c. 640–555 B.C.) , See also:Greek lyric poet, a native of See also:Himera in See also:Sicily, or of Mataurus a Locrian See also:colony in the See also:south of See also:Italy. According to Suidas, his name was originally Tisias, but was changed to Stesichorus (" organizer of choruses "). His future See also:eminence as a poet was foretold when a See also:nightingale perched upon his lips and sang (See also:Pliny, Nat. Hist., x. 43). We are told that he warned his See also:fellow-citizens against See also:Phalaris, whom they had chosen as their See also:general, by See also:relating to them the well-known See also:fable of the See also:horse, which, in its eagerness to punish the See also:stag for intruding upon its pastures, became the slave of See also:man (See also:Aristotle, See also:Rhetoric, ii. 20). But his warnings had no effect; he himself was obliged to flee to Catana, where he died and was buried before the See also:gate called after him the Stesichorean. The See also:story that he was struck See also:blind for slandering See also:Helen in a poem and afterwards recovered his sight when, in consequence of a See also:dream, he had composed a palinode or recantation (in which he declared that only Helen's phantom had been carried off to See also:Troy), is told by See also:Plato (See also:Phaedrus 243 A.), See also:Pausanias (iii. 19, 13), and others. We possess about See also:thirty fragments of his poems, none of them longer than six lines.

They are written in the Doric See also:

dialect, with epic licences; the See also:metre is dactylico-See also:trochaic. Brief as they are, they show us what See also:Longinus meant by calling Stesichorus " most like See also:Homer "; they are full of epic grandeur, and have a stately sublimity that reminds us of See also:Pindar. Stesichorus indeed made a new departure by using lyric See also:poetry to celebrate gods and heroes rather than human feelings and passions; this is what See also:Quintilian (Instil. x. i, 62) means by saying that he " sustained the See also:burden of epic poetry with the See also:lyre." Several of his poems sung of the adventures of Heracles; one dealt with the See also:siege of See also:Thebes, another with the See also:sack of Troy.' The last is interesting as being the first poem containing that See also:form of the story of See also:Aeneas's See also:flight to which See also:Virgil afterwards See also:ave currency in his Aeneid. The popular legends of Sicily also inspired his muse; he was the first to introduce the shepherd See also:Daphnis who came to a miserable end after he had proved faith-less to the nymph who loved him. Stesichorus completed the form of the choral See also:ode by adding the See also:epode to the See also:strophe and See also:antistrophe; and " you do not even know Stesichorus's three " passed into a proverbial expression for unpardonable See also:ignorance (unless the words simply mean, " you do not even know three lines, or poems, of Stesichorus "). He was famed in antiquity for the richness and splendour of his See also:imagination and his See also:style, although Quintilian censures his redundancy and See also:Hermogenes remarks on the excessive sweetness that results from his abundant use of epithets. Fragments in T. See also:Bergk, Poetae lyrici graeci, iii. ; see also S. Bernage, De Stesichoro lyrico (188o); O. See also:Crusius, " Stesichorus and See also:die epodische See also:Composition in der griechischen Lyrik," in Commentationes Philologicae, dedicated to 0. See also:Ribbeck (1888).

End of Article: STESICHORUS (c. 640–555 B.C.)

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