Stesichorus - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Stesichorus was the first great poet of the Greek 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

Phalaris

Phalaris was the tyrant of Acragas in Sicily, from approximately 570 to 554 BC.-History:He was entrusted with the building of the temple of Zeus Atabyrius in the citadel, and took advantage of his position to make himself despot. Under his rule Agrigentum seems to have attained considerable...

, 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

Nine lyric poets

The nine lyric poets were a canon of archaic Greek composers esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria as worthy of critical study.They were:*Alcman of Sparta...

esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...

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

Lille

Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...

papyrus, in 1974), have led to some improvements in our understanding of his work, confirming his role as a link between Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

's epic narrative and the lyric narrative of poets like Pindar

Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...

.

The following description of the birthplace of the monster Geryon

Geryon

In Greek mythology, Geryon , son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe and grandson of Medusa, was a fearsome giant who dwelt on the island Erytheia of the mythic Hesperides in the far west of the Mediterranean. A more literal-minded later generation of Greeks associated the region with Tartessos in southern...

, preserved as a quote by the geographer Strabo

Strabo

Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

, is characteristic of the 'descriptive fulness' of his style:

........................

A nineteenth century translation imaginatively fills in the gaps while communicating something of the richness of the language:

Where monster Geryon first beheld the light,

Famed Erytheia rises to the sight;

Born near th' unfathomed silver springs that gleam

'Mid caverned rocks, and feed Tartessus' stream.

Stesichorus exercised an important influence on the representation of myth in 6th century art and on the development of Athenian dramatic poetry.

Biography

Details of Stesichorus's life are as fragmentary as his verse and the historical sources are often contradictory. A useful example is provided by the Suda

Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

, a 10th century Byzantine encyclopaedia, here reproduced in an English translation from a Loeb

Loeb Classical Library

The Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek and Latin Literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each...

edition.
The main points addressed by the Suda are expanded and analysed under the following headings:

Chronology

The specific dates given by the Suda for Stesichorus have been dismissed by one modern scholar as "specious precision" its dates for the floruit
Floruit
Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

of Alcman

Alcman

Alcman was an Ancient Greek choral lyric poet from Sparta. He is the earliest representative of the Alexandrinian canon of the nine lyric poets.- Family :...

(the 27th Olympiad), the life of Stesichorus (37th–56th Olympiads) and the birth of Simonides

Simonides

* Simonides of Ceos, , a lyric poet* Semonides of Amorgos, an iambic poet* Flavius Simonides Agrippa, son of Roman Jewish Historian Josephus* Constantine Simonides, 19th-century forger of 'ancient' manuscripts...

(the 56th Olympiad) virtually lay these three poets end-to-end, a coincidence that seems to underscore a convenient division between old and new styles of poetry. Nevertheless, the Suda's dates "fit reasonably well" with other indications of Stesichorus's life-span for example, they are consistent with a claim elsewhere in Suda that the poetess Sappho

Sappho

Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

was his contemporary, along with Alcaeus

Alcaeus

Alcaeus may refer to:*Alcaeus , a writer of ten plays of the Old Comedy.*Alcaeus , one of several figures of this name in Greek mythology*12607 Alcaeus - a main belt asteroid...

and Pittacus, and also with the claim, attested by other sources, that Phalaris

Phalaris

was his contemporary. Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

quoted a speech the poet is supposed to have made to the people of Himera warning them against the tyrannical ambitions of Phalaris. The Byzantine grammarian Tzetzes also listed him as a contemporary of the tyrant and yet made him a contemporary of the philosopher Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...

as well. According to Lucian

Lucian

Lucian of Samosata was a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.His ethnicity is disputed and is attributed as Assyrian according to Frye and Parpola, and Syrian according to Joseph....

, the poet lived to 85 years of age. Hieronymus

Saint Jerome

Saint Jerome is a Christian church father, best known for translating the Bible into Latin.Saint Jerome may also refer to:*Jerome of Pavia , Bishop of Pavia...

declared that his poems became sweeter and more swan-like as he approached death, and Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

knew of a bronzed statue representing him as a bent old man holding a book. Eusebius dated his floruit in Olympiad 42.2 (611/10 BC) and his death in Olympiad 55.1 (560/59 BC).

Family

The Suda's claim that Hesiod was the father of Stesichorus can be dismissed as "fantasy" yet it is also mentioned by Tzetzes and the Hesiodic scholiast Proclus (one of them however named the mother of Stesichorus via Hesiod as Ctimene and the other as Clymene). According to another tradition known to Cicero

Cicero

, Stesichorus was the grandson of Hesiod yet even this verges on anachronism since Hesiod was composing verses around 700 BC. Stesichorus might be regarded as Hesiod's literary 'heir' (his treatment of Helen in the Palinode, for example, may have owed much to Hesiod's Catalogue of Women
Catalogue of Women
thumb|275px|[[Guido Reni]]'s first Atalanta e Ippomene , depicting the race of [[Atalanta]], a myth which was known to Reni from [[Ovid]]'s [[Metamorphoses]], but is now also represented by several fragments of the Catalogue of Women.The Catalogue of Women —also known as...

) and maybe this was the source of confusion about a family relationship. According to Stephanus of Byzantium

Stephanus of Byzantium

Stephen of Byzantium, also known as Stephanus Byzantinus , was the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled Ethnica...

and the philosopher Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

the poet's father was named Euphemus, but an inscription on a herm

Herm

Herm is the smallest of the Channel Islands that is open to the public and is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. Cars are banned from the small island just like its Channel Island neighbour, Sark. Unlike Sark, bicycles are also banned...

from Tivoli

Tivoli, Italy

Tivoli , the classical Tibur, is an ancient Italian town in Lazio, about 30 km east-north-east of Rome, at the falls of the Aniene river where it issues from the Sabine hills...

listed him as Euclides. The poet's mathematically inclined brother was named Mamertinus by the Suda but a scholiast in a commentary on Euclid

Euclid

Euclid , fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I...

named him Mamercus.

Background

Stesichorus's lyrical treatment of epic themes was well-suited to a western Greek audience, owing to the popularity of hero-cults in southern Italy and Magna Graeca, as for example the cult of Philoctetes

Philoctetes

Philoctetes or Philocthetes according to Greek mythology, the son of King Poeas of Meliboea in Thessaly. He was a Greek hero, famed as an archer, and was a participant in the Trojan War. He was the subject of at least two plays by Sophocles, one of which is named after him, and one each by both...

at Sybaris

Sybaris

Sybaris was an ancient city in Magna Graecia on the western shore of the Gulf of Taranto. The wealth of the city during the 6th century BC was so great that the Sybarites became synonymous with pleasure and luxury...

, Diomedes

Diomedes

Diomedes or Diomed is a hero in Greek mythology, known for his participation in the Trojan War.He was born to Tydeus and Deipyle and later became King of Argos, succeeding his maternal grandfather, Adrastus. In Homer's Iliad Diomedes is regarded alongside Ajax as one of the best warriors of all...

at Thurii

Thurii

Thurii , called also by some Latin writers Thurium , for a time also Copia and Copiae, was a city of Magna Graecia, situated on the Tarentine gulf, within a short distance of the site of Sybaris, whose place it may be considered as having taken...

and the Atreidae at Tarentum

Taranto

Taranto is a coastal city in Apulia, Southern Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Taranto and is an important commercial port as well as the main Italian naval base....

. It was also a sympathetic environment for his most famous poem, The Palinode, composed in praise of Helen, an important cult figure in the Doric diaspora. On the other hand, the western Greeks were not very different to their eastern counterparts and his poetry cannot be regarded exclusively as a product of the Greek West . His poetry reveals both Doric and Ionian

Ionians

The Ionians were one of the four major tribes into which the Classical Greeks considered the population of Hellenes to have been divided...

influences and this is consistent with the Suda'a claim that his birthplace was either Metauria or Himera, both of which were founded by colonists of mixed Ionian/Doric descent. On the other hand, a Doric/Ionian flavour was fashionable among later poets it is found in the 'choral' lyrics of the Ionian poets Simonides

Simonides

and Bacchylides

Bacchylides

Bacchylides was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets which included his uncle Simonides. The elegance and polished style of his lyrics have been a commonplace of Bacchylidean scholarship since at least Longinus...

and it might have been fashionable even in Stesichorus's own day. His poetry included a description of the river Himera as well as praise for the town named after it, and his poem Geryoneis included a description of Pallantium in Arcadia. His possible exile from Arcadia is attributed by one modern scholar to rivalry between Tegea

Tegea

Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a former municipality in Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Tripoli, of which it is a municipal unit. Its seat was the village Stadio....

and Sparta

Sparta

Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

. Traditional accounts indicate that he was politically active in Magna Graeca. Aristotle mentions two public speeches by Stesichorus: one to the people of Himera, warning them against Phalaris, and another to the people of Locri

Locri

Locri is a town and comune in the province of Reggio Calabria, Calabria, southern Italy. The name derives from the ancient Greek town Locris.-History:...

, warning them against presumption (possibly referring to their war against Rhegium). Philodemus

Philodemus

Philodemus of Gadara was an Epicurean philosopher and poet. He studied under Zeno of Sidon in Athens, before moving to Rome, and then to Herculaneum. He was once known chiefly for his poetry preserved in the Greek anthology, but since the 18th century, many writings of his have been discovered...

believed that the poet once stood between two armies (which two, he doesn't say) and reconciled them with a song but there is a similar story about Terpander

Terpander

Terpander , of Antissa in Lesbos, was a Greek poet and citharede who lived about the first half of the 7th century BC.About the time of the Second Messenian War, he settled in Sparta, whither, according to some accounts, he had been summoned by command of the Delphic Oracle, to compose the...

. According to the 9th century scholar Photius, the term eight all (used by gamblers at dice) derives from an expensive burial the poet received outside Catana, including a monument with eight pillars, eight steps and eight corners, but the 3rd century grammarian Julius Pollux

Julius Pollux

Julius Pollux was a Greek or Egyptian grammarian and sophist from Alexandria who taught at Athens, where he was appointed professor of rhetoric at the Academy by the emperor Commodus — on account of his melodious voice, according to Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists. Nothing of his...

attributed the same term to an 'eight all ways' tomb given to the poet outside Himera.

Career

Many modern scholars don't accept the Suda's claim that Stesichorus was named for his innovations in choral poetry there are good reasons to believe that his lyrical narratives were composed for solo performance (see Works below). Moreover the name wasn't unique there seems to have been more than one poet of this name (see Spurious works below). The Suda in yet another entry refers to the fact, now verified by Papyrus fragments, that Stesichorus composed verses in units of three stanzas (strophe, antistrophe and epode), a format later followed by poets such as Bacchylides

Bacchylides

and Pindar

Pindar

. Suda claims this three-stanza format was popularly referred to as the three of Stesichorus in a proverbial saying rebuking cultural buffoons ("You don't even know the three of Stesichorus!"). According to one modern scholar, however, this saying could instead refer to the following three lines of his poem The Palinode, addressed to Helen of Troy:

There is no truth in that story,

You didn't ride in the well-rowed galleys,

You didn't reach the walls of Troy.

Helen of Troy's bad character was a common theme among poets such as Sappho and Alcaeus and, according to various ancient accounts, Stesichorus viewed her in the same light until she magically punished him with blindness for blaspheming her in one of his poems. According to a colourful account recorded by Pausanias, she later sent an explanation to Stesichorus via a man from Croton

Croton

-In plants:* Croton , a plant genus of the family Euphorbiaceae* Crotoneae, a tribe of the subfamily Crotonoideae* Codiaeum variegatum, a plant commonly called a "Croton"...

, who was on a pilgrimage to White Island in the Black Sea (near the mouth of the Blue Danube), and it was in response to this that Stesichorus composed the Palinode, absolving her of all blame for the Trojan War and thus restoring himself to full sight.

Works

The ancients associated the lyrical qualities of Stesichorus with the voice of the nightingale, as in this quote from the Palatine Anthology

Palatine Anthology

The Palatine Anthology is the collection of Greek poems and epigrams discovered in 1606 in the Palating Library in Heidelberg. It is based on the lost collection of Constantine Cephalas of the 10th century, which has been composed using older anthologies. It contains material from the 7th century...

: "...at his birth, when he had just reached the light of day, a nightingale, travelling through the air from somewhere or other, perched unnoticed on his lips and struck up her clear song." The account is repeated by Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

but it was the epic qualities of his work that most impressed ancient commentators, though with some reservations on the part of Quintillian:

In a similar vein, Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...

commends Stesichorus for "...the magnificence of the settings of his subject matter; in them he has preserved the traits and reputations of his characters", and Longinus

Longinus (literature)

Longinus is the conventional name of the author of the treatise, On the Sublime , a work which focuses on the effect of good writing. Longinus, sometimes referred to as Pseudo-Longinus because his real name is unknown, was a Greek teacher of rhetoric or a literary critic who may have lived in the...

puts him in select company with Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

, Archilochus

Archilochus

Archilochus, or, Archilochos While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer , p...

and Plato

Plato

as the 'most Homeric' of authors.

Modern scholars tend to accept the general thrust of the ancient comments – even the 'fault' noted by Quintillian gets endorsement: 'longwindedness', as one modern scholar calls it, citing, as proof of it, the interval of 400 lines separating Geryon's death from his eloquent anticipation of it. Similarly, "the repetitiveness and slackness of the style" of the recently discovered Lille papyrus has even been interpreted by one modern scholar as proof of Stesichorean authorship – though others originally used it as an argument against. Possibly Stesichorus was even more Homeric than ancient commentators realized – they had assumed that he composed verses for performance by choirs (the triadic structure of the stanzas, comprising strophe, antistrophe and epode, is consistent with choreographed movement) but a poem such as the Geryoneis included some 1500 lines and it probably required about four hours to perform – longer than a chorus might reasonably be expected to dance. Moreover, the versatility of lyric meter is suited to solo performance with self-accompaniment on the lyre – which is how Homer himself delivered poetry. Whether or not it was a choral technique, the triadic structure of Stesichorean lyrics allowed for novel arrangements of dactylic meter – the dominant meter in his poems and also the defining meter of Homeric epic – thus allowing for Homeric phrasing to be adapted to new settings. However, Stesichorus did more than recast the form of epic poetry – works such as the Palinode were also a recasting of epic material: in that version of the Trojan War, the combatants fought over a phantom Helen while the real Helen either stayed home or went to Egypt (see a summarybelow). The 'Lyric Age' of Greece was in part self-discovery and self-expression – as in the works of Alcaeus and Sappho – but a concern for heroic values and epic themes still endured:

An 'Homeric' simile

The Homeric qualities of Stesichorus' poetry are demonstrated in a fragment of his poem Geryoneis describing the death of the monster Geryon. A scholiast writing in a margin on Hesiod's Theogony

Theogony

The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogies of the gods of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC...

noted that Stesichorus gave the monster wings, six hands and six feet, whereas Hesiod himself had only described it as 'three-headed'. yet Stesichorus adapted Homeric motifs to create a humanized portrait of the monster, whose death in battle mirrors the death of Gorgythion

Gorgythion

In Greek mythology, Gorgythion was one of the sons of King Priam of Troy at the time of the Trojan War and appears as a minor character in Homer's Iliad. His mother was Castianeira of Aisyme.-Period:...

in Homer's Iliad, translated here by Richard Lattimore:

He bent drooping his head to one side, as a garden poppy

bends beneath the weight of its yield and the rains of springtime;" (Iliad8.306-8)

Homer here transforms Gorgythion's death in battle into a thing of beautythe poppy hasn't wilted or died. Stesichorus adapted the simile to restore Death's ugliness while still retaining the poignancy of the moment:

Then Geryon rested his neck to one side

As might a poppy when it mars

The tenderness of its body shedding

Suddenly all of its petals... (Geryoneis)

The mutual self-reflection of the two passages is part of the novel aesthetic experience that Stesichorus here puts into play. The enduring freshness of his art, in spite of its epic traditions, is borne out by Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus was a fourth-century Roman historian. He wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Antiquity...

in an anecdote about Socrates: happening to overhear, on the eve of his own excution, the rendition of a song of Stesichorus, the old philosopher asked to be taught it: "So that I may know something more when I depart from life."

The 26 books

His works, according to the Suda, were collected in 26 books but each of these was probably a long, narrative poem. The titles of more than half of them are recorded by ancient sources:

Helen: This might have been the poem in which he portrayed Helen of Troy according to convention as a bad character. His interest in the Trojan epic cycle is evinced in a number of works.
Helen: Palinodes: An introduction to a poem of Theocritus
Theocritus
Theocritus , the creator of ancient Greek bucolic poetry, flourished in the 3rd century BC.-Life:Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings. We must, however, handle these with some caution, since some of the poems commonly attributed to him have little claim to...

refers to "the first book of Stesichorus's Helen", indicating that there were at least two books with this title. Similarly, a commentary recorded on a papyrus, indicates there were two Palinodes, one censuring Homer, the other Hesiod for the false story that Helen went to Troy. Dio Chrysostom
Dio Chrysostom
Dio Chrysostom , Dion of Prusa or Dio Cocceianus was a Greek orator, writer, philosopher and historian of the Roman Empire in the 1st century. Eighty of his Discourses are extant, as well as a few Letters and a funny mock essay In Praise of Hair, as well as a few other fragments...

summarises two accounts of the Palinode, one in which Helen never sailed for Troy, and a second in which she ended up in Egypt – only her image arrived at Troy. It is not known if either of the two Palinodes was separate from the Helen book(s).
Sack of Troy: Some scholars think the content of the poem can be deduced from a relief carved onto a monument near Rome, but this is contentious – see the section below Tabula Iliaca.
Wooden Horse: The title was recorded in a fragmentary form on a roll of papyrus: Στη...Ίππ.. ~ Ste(sichorus's Wooden) Hor(se). Possibly it was just an alternative title for Sack of Troy.
Nostoi (The Returned): This dealt with the return of the Greek warriors from Troy.
Geryoneis: This relates the theft by Heracles
Heracles
Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...

of Geryon
Geryon
In Greek mythology, Geryon , son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe and grandson of Medusa, was a fearsome giant who dwelt on the island Erytheia of the mythic Hesperides in the far west of the Mediterranean. A more literal-minded later generation of Greeks associated the region with Tartessos in southern...

's cattle. Many recently discovered fragments allow us a glimpse of the poet at work over the length of the entire poem. It includes:
- romantic geography – descriptions of the Sun's voyage in a golden cup under Ocean, of Eurytion
  Eurytion
  In Greek mythology Eurytion , "widely-honoured", was a name attributed to six individuals....
  
  's homeland, the 'all-golden' Hesperides
  Hesperides
  In Greek mythology, the Hesperides are nymphs who tend a blissful garden in a far western corner of the world, located near the Atlas mountains in North Africa at the edge of the encircling Oceanus, the world-ocean....
  
  , and of Pallanteum in Arcadia
  Arcadia
  Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...
  
  , which possibly featured as the home of the Centaur
  Centaur
  In Greek mythology, a centaur or hippocentaur is a member of a composite race of creatures, part human and part horse...
  
  , Pholus;
- poignant speeches based on Homeric models – a proud speech by Geryon to Heracles that echoes Sarpedon's speech to Glaucus, and an exchange between Geryon and his mother Callirhoe
  Callirhoe
  Callirrhoe may refer to:* In Greek mythology:** Callirrhoe , a daughter of Oceanus and mother of Geryon, one of the Oceanids...
  
  that echoes exchanges between Achilles
  Achilles
  In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
  
  -Thetis
  Thetis
  Silver-footed Thetis , disposer or "placer" , is encountered in Greek mythology mostly as a sea nymph or known as the goddess of water, one of the fifty Nereids, daughters of the ancient one of the seas with shape-shifting abilities who survives in the historical vestiges of most later Greek myths...
  
  and Hector
  Hector
  In Greek mythology, Hectōr , or Hektōr, is a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War. As the first-born son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, a descendant of Dardanus, who lived under Mount Ida, and of Tros, the founder of Troy, he was a prince of the royal house and the...
  
  -Hecuba
  Hecuba
  Hecuba was a queen in Greek mythology, the wife of King Priam of Troy during the Trojan War, with whom she had 19 children. These children included several major characters of Homer's Iliad such as the warriors Hector and Paris, and the prophetess Cassandra...
  
  ;
- heroic action, again with Homeric colouring – a description of the dying Geryon that echoes the death of Gorgythion
  Gorgythion
  In Greek mythology, Gorgythion was one of the sons of King Priam of Troy at the time of the Trojan War and appears as a minor character in Homer's Iliad. His mother was Castianeira of Aisyme.-Period:...
  
  .
Cerberus: The title is mentioned by Julius Pollux
Julius Pollux
Julius Pollux was a Greek or Egyptian grammarian and sophist from Alexandria who taught at Athens, where he was appointed professor of rhetoric at the Academy by the emperor Commodus — on account of his melodious voice, according to Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists. Nothing of his...

only because it included the Greek word for a purse but clearly it relates to Heracles's descent into Hades
Hades
Hades , Hadēs, originally , Haidēs or , Aidēs , meaning "the unseen") was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. The genitive , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative came to designate the abode of the dead.In Greek mythology, Hades...

to fetch Cerberus
Cerberus
Cerberus , or Kerberos, in Greek and Roman mythology, is a multi-headed hound which guards the gates of the Underworld, to prevent those who have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping...

.
Cycnus: A scholiast commenting on a poem by Pindar summarises the story: Heracles's final triumph over Cycnus
Cycnus
In Greek mythology, four people were known as Cycnus or Cygnus. Most of them ended up being transformed into swans. The most famous Cycnus however, was the son of Ares.-Son of Ares:Cycnus was sired upon Pelopia or Pyrene...

after an initial defeat.
Skylla: The title is mentioned by a scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes
Apollonius of Rhodes
Apollonius Rhodius, also known as Apollonius of Rhodes , early 3rd century BCE – after 246 BCE, was a poet, and a librarian at the Library of Alexandria...

in a passing reference to Skylla's parentage and possibly it involved Heracles.
Thebaid, Seven Against Thebes?: These two titles are conjectured by one modern scholar as appropriate for the longest fragment attributed to Stesichorus – discovered in 1974 among the wrappings of a mummy of the 2nd century BC stored at the university of Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...

, generally known as The Lille Stesichorus. It presents a speech by a Theban queen, possibly Jocasta
Jocasta
In Greek mythology, Jocasta, also known as Jocaste , Epikastê, or Iokastê was a daughter of Menoeceus and Queen consort of Thebes, Greece. She was the wife of Laius. Wife and mother of Oedipus by Laius, and both mother and grandmother of Antigone, Eteocles, Polynices and Ismene by Oedipus...

, and some scholars have denied attribution to Stesichorus on account of its "drab, repetitious flaccidity". But opinions are mixed and one scholar sees in it "...Stesichorus' full mastery of his technique, handling epic situations and characters with the flexibility and poignancy of lyric."
Eriphyle: The title is mentioned by Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus , was a physician and philosopher, and has been variously reported to have lived in Alexandria, Rome, or Athens. His philosophical work is the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman skepticism....

in relation to an imaginative account of Asclepius
Asclepius
Asclepius is the God of Medicine and Healing in ancient Greek religion. Asclepius represents the healing aspect of the medical arts; his daughters are Hygieia , Iaso , Aceso , Aglæa/Ægle , and Panacea...

raising the dead at Thebes. Evidently it concerns Eriphyle
Eriphyle
In Greek mythology, Eriphyle , daughter of Talaus, was the mother of Alcmaeon and the wife of Amphiaraus. Eriphyle persuaded Amphiaraus to take part in the raid that initiated the mythic tale of the Seven Against Thebes, though she knew he would die...

's role in the Theban epic cycle but with an imaginative twist.
Europa: The title is mentioned by a scholiast on the Phoenissae of Euripides
Euripides
Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

in relation to Stesichorus's imaginative variation on the traditional tale of Cadmus
Cadmus
Cadmus or Kadmos , in Greek mythology was a Phoenician prince, the son of king Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre and the brother of Phoenix, Cilix and Europa. He was originally sent by his royal parents to seek out and escort his sister Europa back to Tyre after she was abducted from the shores...

, the brother of Europa
Europa (mythology)
In Greek mythology Europa was a Phoenician woman of high lineage, from whom the name of the continent Europe has ultimately been taken. The name Europa occurs in Hesiod's long list of daughters of primordial Oceanus and Tethys...

, sowing dragon's teeth – Stesichorus presented Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...

in that role.
Oresteia: It came in two parts. The title is mentioned by a scholiast on Peace
Peace (play)
Peace is an Athenian Old Comedy written and produced by the Greek playwright Aristophanes. It won second prize at the City Dionysia where it was staged just a few days before the ratification of the Peace of Nicias , which promised to end the ten year old Peloponnesian War...

, a play by Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...

, attributing some of the lyrics to a borrowing from Stesichorus's poem. The 'second' Oresteia is mentioned in a scholiast's comment on Dionysius of Thrace, according to which Stesichorus attributed the discovery of the Greek alphabet to Palamedes.
Boar-hunters: Athenaeus
Athenaeus
Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...

mentions the title when quoting a description of a boar nosing the earth and the poem evidently concerned Meleager
Meleager
In Greek mythology, Meleager was a hero venerated in his temenos at Calydon in Aetolia. He was already famed as the host of the Calydonian boar hunt in the epic tradition that was reworked by Homer....

and the Calydonian Boar
Calydonian Boar
The Calydonian Boar is one of the monsters of Greek mythology that had to be overcome by heroes of the Olympian age. Sent by Artemis to ravage the region of Calydon in Aetolia because its king failed to honor her in his rites to the gods, it was killed in the Calydonian Hunt, in which many male...

.
Funeral Games of Pelias
Pelias
Pelias was king of Iolcus in Greek mythology, the son of Tyro and Poseidon. His wife is recorded as either Anaxibia, daughter of Bias, or Phylomache, daughter of Amphion. He was the father of Acastus, Pisidice, Alcestis, Pelopia, Hippothoe, Asteropia, and Antinoe.Tyro was married to Cretheus...

: The title is recorded by Zenobius
Zenobius
Zenobius was a Greek sophist, who taught rhetoric at Rome during the reign of Emperor Hadrian .-Biography:He was the author of a collection of proverbs in three books, still extant in an abridged form, compiled, according to the Suda, from Didymus of Alexandria and "The Tarrhaean"...

, Athenaeus
Athenaeus
Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...

and Etymologicum Magnum
Etymologicum Magnum
Etymologicum Magnum is the traditional title of a Greek lexical encyclopedia compiled at Constantinople by an unknown lexicographer around 1150 AD. It is the largest Byzantine lexicon and draws on many earlier grammatical, lexical and rhetorical works...

, the last two of which also include a handful of quotes.

Spurious works

Some poems were wrongly attributed to Stesichorus by ancient sources, including bucolic poems and some love songs such as Calyce and Rhadine. It is possible that these are the works of another Stesichorus belonging to the fourth century, mentioned in the Marmor Parium.

Tabula Iliaca

Bovillae

Bovillae was an ancient town in Lazio, central Italy, currently part of the Frattocchie frazione in the municipality of Marino.It was a station on the Via Appia , located c. 18 km SE of Rome. It was a colony of Alba Longa, and appears as one of the thirty cities of the Latin league...

, about twelve miles outside Rome, was the original site of a monument dating from the Augustan period and now located in the Capitoline Museum. The stone monument features scenes from the fall of Troy, depicted in low relief, and an inscription: ('Sack of Troy according to Stesichorus'). Scholars are divided as to whether or not it accurately depicts incidents described by Stesichorus in his poem Sack of Troy. There is, for example, a scene showing Aeneas

Aeneas

Aeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...

and his father Anchises

Anchises

In Greek mythology, Anchises was the son of Capys and Themiste . His major claim to fame in Greek mythology is that he was a mortal lover of the goddess Aphrodite . One version is that Aphrodite pretended to be a Phrygian princess and seduced him for nearly two weeks of lovemaking...

departing 'for Hesperia

Hesperia

Hesperia may refer to:Hesperia or Hesper is the Greek goddess of the evening star in Greek mythology,may refer to:* Hesperia, one of the Hesperides in Greek mythology...

' with 'sacred objects', which might have more to do with the poetry of Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

than with that of Stesichorus.