(b ?Mataurus [now Marro], c610 bce; d ?Catana [now Catania], Sicily, c535 bce). Greek lyric poet. Uncertainty surrounds the traditional accounts of Stesichorus; his very name, ‘marshal of the chorus’, may have been a sobriquet. It seems clear that he came from the Greek cities at the southern tip of Italy, where the active musical life of Locri (Mataurus was founded by Locrians) probably influenced him. Both the Athenians and the Spartans performed his compositions. These works are transitional: Quintilian described him as ‘sustaining the weightiness of epic poetry with the lyre’ (Institutio oratoria, x.1.62). The content was epic, the form lyric. He employed a variety of dactylic rhythms, longer or more complex than the epic hexameter (Pseudo-Plutarch, On Music, 1132c, 1133f, 1135c, on the authority of Heraclides, Glaucus of Rhegium and Aristoxenus). Glaucus declared that Stesichorus imitated Olympus rather than Orpheus or Terpander and used the ‘chariot nome’. This associates him doubly with the Aulos; no connection with the Kithara appears in the fragments. One fragment (Campbell, frag.278), which contains a direct reference to the lyra, must be assigned to the later poet of the same name, victorious at Athens in 370 or 369 bce (Parian Chronicle, 73). The likelihood of such a connection is nevertheless strong on a number of grounds. Stesichorus apparently held Apollo in special regard, and he would have been free to choose either the aulos or the kithara for purposes of accompaniment.
The fragments include several lines from a version of the Orestes myth (Campbell, frags.211–12). They are cited by the scholiast on Aristophanes' Peace, 797ff – these lines are themselves taken in part from Stesichorus. The latter speaks of ‘devising a Phrygian tune’ (melos) for gentle spring songs in celebration of the Graces. Like Plato, he ignored current views concerning the ethos of the Phrygian mode. The evidence of papyri now indicates that several of his poems were epic in length. This weakens the usual assumption that he was simply a choral poet; it supports the thesis (see West) that he composed and sang long monodies with kithara accompaniment. Possibly, as a transitional figure, he practised both types of composition.
The 10th-century Byzantine Suda contains a statement that the whole of Stesichorus's poetry displayed a triadic structure of strophe, antistrophe and epode. This claim, still repeated, has no basis either in the metrical schemes of the fragments or in early critical sources. There can be little doubt that the poems on erotic or romantic themes were the work of a later writer.
D.L. Page, ed.: Poetae melici graeci (Oxford, 1962), 94–141
D.A. Campbell, ed. and trans.: Greek Lyric, iii (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1991), 28–199
J. Vürtheim: Stesichoros' Fragmente und Biographie (Leiden, 1919)
P. Maas: ‘Stesichoros (1), (2)’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumwissenschaft, 2nd ser., iii (Stuttgart, 1929), 2453–62
C.M. Bowra: Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides (Oxford, 1936, 2/1961), 74–129
M. Treu: ‘Stesichoros’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, suppl.xi (Stuttgart, 1968), 1253–6
M.L. West: ‘Stesichorus’, Classical Quarterly, xxi (1971), 302–14
W. Kraus: ‘Stesichoros (1), (2)’, Der kleine Pauly, ed. K. Ziegler and W. Sontheimer, v (Stuttgart, 1975), 367–8
P. Parsons: ‘The Lille Stesichorus’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, xxvi (1977), 7–36
M. Davies: ‘The Paroemiographers on ta tria tōn Stēsichorou’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, cii (1982), 206–10
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN