Greek Lyric, Volume III: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others

by Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides

The most important poets writing in Greek in the sixth century BCE came from Sicily and southern Italy. Stesichorus was called by ancient writers "most Homeric"--a recognition of his epic themes and noble style. He composed verses about the Trojan War and its aftermath, the Argonauts, the adventures of Heracles. He may have been a solo singer, performing these poems to his own cithara accompaniment. Ibycus probably belonged to the colony of Rhegium in southwestern Italy. Like Stesichorus he wrote lyrical narratives on mythological themes, but he also composed erotic poems. Simonides is said to have spent his later years in Sicily. He was in Athens at the time of the Persian Wars, though, and was acclaimed for his epitaph on the Athenians who died at Marathon. He was a successful poet in various genres, including victory odes, dirges, and dithyrambic poetry. The power of his pathos emerges in the fragments we have.

All the extant verse of these poets is given in this third volume of David Campbell's edition of Greek lyric poetry, along with the ancients' accounts of their lives and works. Ten contemporary poets are also included, among them Arion, Lasus, and Pratinas.

The Greek Lyric edition is five volumes. Sappho and Alcaeus-- the illustrious singers of sixth-century Lesbos--are in the first volume. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the "Anacreontea;" and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Bacchylides and other fifth-century poets are in Volume IV along with Corinna (although some argue that she belongs to the third century). The last volume includes the new school of dithyrambic poets (mid-fifth to mid-fourth century), together with the anonymous poems: drinking songs, children's songs, cult hymns, and others.

Genres: Poetry, Ancient, Classics

672 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Stesichorus (Greek: Στησίχορος, Stēsikhoros, c. 630–555 BC) was the first great lyric poet of the West. He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres but he is also famous for some ancient traditions about his life, such as his opposition to the tyrant Phalaris, and the blindness he is said to have incurred and cured by composing verses first insulting and then flattering to Helen of Troy. He was ranked among the nine lyric poets esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria and yet his work attracted relatively little interest among ancient commentators, so that remarkably few fragments of his poetry now survive. As one scholar observed in 1967: "Time has dealt more harshly with Stesichorus than with any other major lyric poet." Recent discoveries, recorded on Egyptian papyrus (notably and controversially, the Lille Stesichorus), have led to some improvements in our understanding of his work, confirming his role as a link between Homer's epic narrative and the lyric narrative of poets like Pindar.

Reviews

[Johan Thilander]

(Framför allt läst Simonides-avdelningen inför Anne Carsons Det oförlorades ekonomi - skumläst resten)

Tack vare Sapfo (och kanske Alkaios) är vi vana vid att läsa fragmentarisk text, men vad gäller Simonides är det mesta som finns bevarat främst fragment av andrahandskällor. Vittnesmål och parafraseringar. Av det som tillskrivs Simonides är det inte mycket som faktiskt kan bekräftas vara utav honom.
Detta gör något med läsningen, Simonides blir en undflyende myt för oss läsare, och man känner de där historiska vingslagen lite extra starkt i dessa få, halvförlorade passager.

[James Violand · Rating 4 out of 5]

The evolution of lyric poetry during the 5th century BC in Greece. All different topics. Some bitter tirades, some profane, some misogynistic, some hilarious. I liked it. Not for everyone - actually for only the few like me who like ancient Greece anything.

[شمس]

. . . offshoot of the blue-eyed Graces, darling of the lovely-haired (Seasons), the Cyprian and soft-lidded Temptation nursed you among rose-blossoms. —Ibycus, 288

Again Love, looking at me meltingly from under his dark eyelids, hurls me with his manifold enchantments into the boundless nets of the Cyrpain. —Ibycus, 287

Over the waves of the deep brine they came to the beautiful island of the gods, where the Hesperides have their homes of solid gold . . . —Stesichorus, S8

As long as a mortal has the lovely flower of youth, he ponders with light heart many impossibles; for he neither expects to grow old or die, nor when he is healthy does he worry about illness. Fools, to think like that and not realise that mortals’ time for youth and life is brief: you must take note of this, and since you are near the end of your life endure, indulging yourself with good things. —Simonides, eleg.8

__________
Ibycus supplies 3 of my favourite poetic pieces; the two above, and No. 286 below.

Only the Greeks can speak like this . . .
__________
Stesichorus
Stesichorus, the full and limitless voice of the Muse, was given burial by the sooty land of Catana. In his breast, according to Pythagoras’ words about mans nature, the soul that was once Homer's made its second home. —Palatine Anthology, 24

. . . and you, Stesicohrus, who channelled the Homeric stream into your own works. —Palatine Anthology (34)

Sesame cakes and groats and oil-and-honey cakes and other cakes and yellow honey. (179)

(With these words she opened) her fragrant robe . . .(S13)

Immortal life (S31)

With lovely tresses (S71)

Many myrtle leaves and garlands of roses and twined wreaths of violets. (187)

She (Helen) displayed her power to the poet Stesichorus also: for when at the beginning of his song he uttered a blasphemy against her, he stood up deprived of his sight; but when he had realised the cause of his plight and had composed the Palinode, as it is called, she restored him to his original condition. (192)

Golden-winged maiden . . . (193)

Gladden your heart with festivity . . . (S148)

Anointed him with nectar-scented oil . . . (fr.61-62)

It is futile and pointless to weep for the dead. (244)

Most high-minded of men. (266)
__________
Ibycus
The golden-haired Cyprian. (282)

Let this labor always be mine. (282b)

And passing sleepless (nights) I ponder (many things) in my heart. (282C)

A complex song of the Pierian Muses . . . (282C)

Once again Love . . . (282C)

But for me love rests at no season: like the Thracian north wind blazing with lightning rushing from the Cyprian with parching fits of madness, dark and shameless, it powerfully shakes my heart from the roots. (286)

About to drink dense clouds . . . (312)

Myrtles and violets and gold-flower and apple-blossoms and roses . . . (315)

She, loosening her many-coloured garments and veils and pins . . . (316)
__________
Tynnichus
. . . a discovery of the Muses. (707)
__________
Simonides
The wise man is he who knows many things by the gift of nature: those who learned, boisterous in their garrulity, utter (the pair of them) idle words like crows against the holy bird of Zeus. —Pindar Olympian 2)(20)

The Muse of Simonides, singer of sweet-song, breathed delight. —Palatine Anthology (43)

Simonides on being asked who was the better, Homer of Hesiod, said, ’The Muses bore Hesiod, the Graces Homer.’ —Vatican Anthology of Gnomic Sayings (47j)

Simonides said Hesiod was a gardener, Homer a garland-maker. Hesiod planted the mythologies of gods and heroes, Homer plaited from the the garland of the Iliad and Odyssey. —Vatican Appendix (47k)

Lest he drop from his hands the crimson thongs. (517)

Men’s strength is slight, their plans impossible; within their brief lifetime toil upon toil; and death hangs inescapable over all alike: of death an equal portion is allotted to good men and to bad. (520)

For all things arrive at one horrible Charybdis, great excellences and wealth alike. (522)

A crimson sail dyed with the moist flower of the sturdy foam-oak (550)

I would have given you a benefit greater than life, if I had come sooner. (551)

They wept for the suckling babe of violet-crowned Eurydice as he breathed out his sweet soul. (553)

Where the holy water of the lovely-haired Muses is drawn from below for lustration. (577a)

Overseer of the holy lustration-water, golden-robed Clio, who give the water-drawers from the ambrosial cave the fragrant lovely water sought with many prayers . . . (577b)

The girl, sending forth words from her crimson lips . . . (585)

Possessing not even lead to compare with refined unalloyed gold. (592)

Contriving her yellow honey . . . (593)

Sweet-scented spring . . . (597)

Possessing sweet sleep . . . (599)

For what has once happened will never be undone. (603)

War against the length of time. (643)

To be healthy is best for mortal man, second is to be handsome in body, third is to be wealthy without trickery, fourth, to be young with ones friends. (651)

Time is sharp-toothed, and he grinds up all things, even the mightiest. (eleg.13)

Your flame was extinguished, aged Sophocles, flower of poets, when you fed on the wine-coloured cluster of Bacchus. (LI)

This tomb received Anacreon, whom the Muses made deathless, the singer of his native Teos, who tuned his lyre for songs of the sweet love of boys, asongs with the scent of the Graces and Loves. One thing alone distresses him in Acheron: not that he let the sun behind and found there the halls of Lethe, bit that he has left behind Megistus, graceful among the youths, and Smerdies, his Thracian passion. But he does not cease from his honey-sweet song: even after death he still has not put to sleep in Hades that lyre of his. (LXVII)

[John Cairns · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cicero tells a story very well of Simonides being saved from death by divine intervention. I wondered how much could be true to fact. Divine intervention was out for a start, and probably put in to link to the divine references Simonides was said to have made in his delivered epinician to a boxer because, as I recall, the gods mentioned also boxed, a reference the boxer wouldn't seem to have picked up on as flattering. The story goes the boxer cut Simonides' fee in half. How does one work out what if anything is true to fact? Since the story exemplifies Simonides instigated a system of mnemonics whereby, after a catastrophe which he was spared, he could identify the bodies, nothing need be true except he was reciting, was called out and was able subsequently to identify who were unrecognisable and why would they all be? Besides isn't the story too well told, as it would be, by Cicero? Turning the page, one is given Quintilian's version which starts with Simonides is said to be the first to reveal an art of remembering, sceptical from the get-go! He reprises the story quite as well as Cicero, as the story goes, he says, sceptically. before launching into his reasons for doubt. Authorities disagree who the song was composed for and where the house was, Simonides himself seeming to indicate Pharsalus. All agree Scopas dies at a banquet in Thessaly, so at Pharsalus is likely. But Simonides nowhere mentions the affair although hardly likely not to if it occurred, and the bit about the Tyndaridae sheer fiction, Quintilian says. Isn't it lovely to have such sanity among the pagans it has taken us two millennia to get back to?

Simonides made a practice of escaping death apparently. A ghost warned him not to board a ship. Obviously no ghost but Simonides could have had a premonition from his unconscious in both instances and one obeys.

I can't leave off without saying how moved I was by his epigram on the Spartans at Thermopylae although unable to appreciate it in the Greek. A great poet shines through the English. The other epigrams may be doubtful. I doubt that one is.

[Sean Sullivan · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Greek poet of whom no complete work survives, Stesichorus isn’t someone I’d read if Anne Carson hadn’t used his work for her stunning Autobiography of Red. This complete edition of the poets work has some beautiful parts, and, as all that survives are fragments, it reads like a work of contemporary avant garde.


Quiet talk of death aside, this isn’t worth your time unless you’re a completest. All you need Stesichorus is in Autobiography of Red.

Not Recommended.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

yep. just good material.

[Carrie]

Simonides in particular