Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/920

Rh 908 STESICHORUS. dedicated two fomices or arches in the forum Boa- rium, and one in the Circus Maximus, and placed upon them gilded sttitues. In the same j^ear that he returned, he was appointed one of the ten com- missioners, who were sent into Greece to settle the affairs of the country, in conjunction with T. Quin- tiu8 Flamininus. (Liv. xxxi. 50, xxxiii. 27, 35 ; Polyb. xviii. 31.) 2. C. Stertinius, was praetor b. c. 188, and obtained Sardinia as his province. (Liv.xxxviii. 35.) 3. L. Stertinius, quaestor b. c. 168. (Liv. xlv. 14.) 4. Stertinius, a Stoic philosopher, whom Ho- race calls in fun the eighth of the wise men. (Hor. Sat. ii. 3. 33, 296, Epist. i. 12. 20.) 5. L. Stertinius, the legatus of Germanicus, defeated the Bructeri in A. D. 15, and found among their booty the eagle of the nineteenth legion, which had been lost in the defeat of Varus. In the course of the same year he was sent by Ger- manicus to receive the surrender of Segimerus, the brother of Segestes ; and in the next year he was despatched against the Angrivarii, a people dwell- ing on the banks of the river Visurgis, whom he defeated, and compelled to acknowledge the supre- macy of Rome. (Tac. Ann. i. 60, 71, ii. 8, 22.) 6. Stertinius Maximus, a rhetorician men- tioned by. the elder Seneca. {Controv.,9.) 7. Stertinius Avitus, a person celebrated by Martial at the beginning of the ninth book of his Epigrams. He is apparently the same person as the L. Stertinius Avitus, who was consul suffectus under Domitian in a. d. 92. (Fasti.) Q. STERTPNIUS, a physician at Rome in the first century after Christ, who, according to Pliny {H.N. xxix. 5), made it a favour that he was content to receive from the emperor five hundred thousand sesterces per annum (or rather more than four thousand four hundred pounds), as he might have made six hundred thousand sesterces (or rather more than five thousand three hundred pounds), by his private practice. He and his brother, who received the same annual income from the emperor Claudius, left between them at their death, notwithstanding large sums that they had spent in beautifying the city of Naples, the sum of thirty millions of sesterces, or rather more than two hundred and sixty-five thousand six hundred pounds. As these sums are considered by Pliny to be very large, they may serve to give us some idea of the fortunes made at Rome by the chief physicians about the beginning of the empire. {Penny Cyclopaedia.) [W. A. G.] STESA'GORAS (5T7j(ra7«J/)as.) 1. An Athe- nian, father of Cimon [No. 1.], and grandfather of the great Miltiades. (Herod, vi. 34, 103.) 2. Son of Cimon [No. 1], and grandson of the above. He succeeded his uncle Miltiades I. in the tyranny of the Thracian Chersonese, and continued the war with the people of Lampsacus, which his predecessor had begun. Not long, however, after his accession, he was assassinated by a pretended deserter from the enemy, and, as he died childless, was succeeded by his brother, the great Miltiades. (Herod, vi. 38, 39.) [E. E.] STESANDER (Sr^o-ovSpoy), a musician of Samos, was the first who sang Homeric hymns to the cithara at the Pythian games. (Ath. xiv. p. 633, a. ; comp. Sext. Empir. adv. Math. vi. 16.) [P.S.] STESrCHORUS (SxTjo-^xopos), of Himera in STESICHORUS. Sicily, a celebrated Greek poet, contemporary with Sappho, Alcaeus, Pittacus, and Phalaris, later than Alcraan, and earlier than Siraonides, is said to have been born in 01. 37, b. c. 632, to have flourished about 01. 43, B, c. 608, and to have died in 01. 55. 1, B. c. 560, or 01. 56, b. c. 556—552, at the age of eighty or, according to Lucian, eighty-five. (Suid. s. w. liTr^crlxopos, 'StfiaviSris^ SaTri^w ; Eu- seb. Ckron. 01. 43. 1 ; Aristot. Bhet. ii. 20. § 5 ; Cyrill. Julian, i. p. 12, d. ; Lucian. Macrob. 26 ; Clinton, F.H. vol. i. s.a. 611, vol. ii. s, aa. 556, 553.) Various attempts have been made to re- move the slight discrepancies in the above numbers ; but it appears better to be content with the general result, which they clearly establish, that Stesi- chorus flourished at the beginning and during the first part of the sixth century b. c. There appears, at first sight, to be a discrepanc)' between these testimonies and the statement of the Parian Marble {Ep. 51), that Stesichorus the poet came into Greece at the same time at which Aeschylus gained his first tragic victory, in the archonship of Philocrates, 01. 73. 3, b. c. 475. But this statement refers, no doubt, to a later poet of the same name and family. That it cannot refer to the Stesichorus now under notice is proved, not only by the above testimonies, but also, as Bentley has shown, by the way in which Siraonides mentions Stesichorus, in connection with Homer, as an ancient poet (Ath. iv. p. 172, e. f.) ; whereas, if the statement of the Marble applied to him, he must have been contemporary with Siraonides. Still further light is thrown on this matter by another clause of the Parian inscription {Ep. 74), which states that " Stesichorus the second, of Hi- mera, conquered at Athens in 01. 1 02. 3," b. c. 369. The clear and satisfactory explanation of these statements is, that the poetic art was, as usual, hereditary in the family of Stesichorus, and that two of his descendants, at different times, went to Athens to take part in the dithyrarabic contests. There are different statements respecting the country of Stesichorus. The prevailing account was that he was born at Himera, and he is some- times called siraply " the poet of Hiraera ; " but others made him a native of Mataurus, or Metau- rus, in the south of Italy (or, as some say, in Sicily), which was a Locrian colony. (Steph. Byz. s. v. Maravpos ; Suid.) Now, as Himera was only founded just before the poet's birth, it is probable that his parents migrated thither from Mataurus ; and here we have, as Kleine and MUller have ob- served, the explanation of the strange tradition which made Stesichorus a son of Hesiod ; for there existed among the Ozolian Locrians, at Oeneon and Naupactus, a race of epic poets, who claimed to be of the lineage of Hesiod ; and from this race we may suppose the family of Stesichorus to have de- scended. The actual connection of the poetry of Stesichorus with the old epic poetry will be ex- plained presently. Besides this mythical statement respecting Hesiod, the following names are men- tioned as that of the father of Stesichorus, — Eu- phorbus, Euphemus, Eucleides, and Hyetes. (Suid. s. V. ; Eudoc. ; Steph. Byz. I. c. ; Epig. Anon. ap. Brunck, Anal. vol. iii. p. 24, No. 33.) According to Suidas, the poet had two brothers, a geometrician named Mamertinus, and a legislator named Halianax. Other statements concerning his family, which rest upon very doubtful authority, will be found in Kleine, pp. 15, 16.