Ibycus

(fl c535 bce). Greek poet. He left his native city of Rhegium in southern Italy to go to Samos at the invitation of its ruler Polycrates. The surviving fragments of his poetry show that he employed the style of choral lyric established more than a generation earlier by Stesichorus, and (the argument becomes less certain at this point) that he further imitated his predecessor by devoting himself to themes taken from mythology. As a court poet at Samos (see also Anacreon) he seems to have explicitly renounced myth for more personal subjects, powerfully expressed through natural imagery. One poem (Edmonds, poem 1) contrasts the gentle coming of love in youth with its unseasonable, shattering onslaught upon the poet. Together with a comparable shorter fragment (Edmonds, frag.2), it is reminiscent of the passionate Aeolic monody of Sappho and Alcaeus; yet both poems use choral metres. Although the strongly marked changes of emotional tone might appear to have demanded a shift in modality, Stesichorus had employed Phrygian for extremes of mood even more sharply opposed. The statement in Aristophanes (Thesmophoriazusae, 162) that Ibycus, Alcaeus and Anacreon ‘spiced’ the harmonia is deliberately frivolous; its meaning remains obscure.

There is little reason to take seriously the assertion by later writers that Ibycus invented the sambukē, a type of harp that is still occasionally confused with the lyre (see Bowra), or other claims which involve the bukanē, a spiral trumpet. Apparently all of these associations originated from the accident of mere formal similarity.

WRITINGS

J.M. Edmonds, ed. and trans.: Lyra graeca, ii (London and Cambridge, MA, 1924, 2/1928/R), 78–119

D.L. Page, ed.: Poetae melici graeci (Oxford, 1962), 144–69

D.A. Campbell, ed. and trans.: Greek Lyric, iii (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1991), 208–93

BIBLIOGRAPHY

U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff: Sappho und Simonides (Berlin, 1913/R), 121–5

C.M. Bowra: Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides (Oxford, 1936, 2/1961), 241–67

W.D. Anderson: Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 78–81

WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN