Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/221

199 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 199 remained hereditary in his family in Himera ; a younger Stesichorus of Himera came, in Olympiad 73. 1. B.C. 4S5, to Greece as a poet*; a third Stesichorus of Himera was victor at Athens, doubtless as chorus- leader, in Olympiad 102. 3. b. c. 370 f. The eldest of them, Stesi- chorus Tisias, made a great change in the artistical form of the chorus. He it was who first broke the monotonous alternation of the strophe and antistrophe through a whole poem, by the introduction of the epode, differing in measure, and by this means made the chorus stand still J. During the strophe, the chorus moved in a certain evolution, which again during the antistrophe was made back to its original station, where it remained while the epode was sung. The chorus of Stesi- chorus seems to have consisted of a combination of several rows or members of eight dancers ; the number eight appears indeed from various traditions to have been, as it were, consecrated by him §. The mu- sical accompaniment was the cithara. The strophes of Stesichorus were of great extent, and composed of different verses, like those of Pindar, though of a simpler character. In many poems they consisted of dac- tylic series, which were sometimes broken shorter, sometimes extended longer, as it were variations of the hexameter. With these Stesichorus combined trochaic dipodies ||, by which the gravity of the dactyls was somewhat tempered ; the metres used by Pindar, and generally for all odes in the Dorian style of music, thus arose Although Stesichorus also mainly employed this grave and solemn harmony, yet he himself mentions on one occasion the use of the Phrygian, which is characte- rized by a deeper pathos, and a more passionate expression ^f. It appears from this fragment that the poet chose, as its metrical form, dactylic sys- tems (l. e. combinations of similar series without any close or break), to which ponderous trochees were attached **. Elsewhere, Stesichorus used also anapaests and choriambics, which correspond in their character to the dactylic verses just mentioned. Occasionally, however, he used the lighter and rather pleasing than solemn logaoedic measure. § 5. As the metres of Stesichorus approach much more nearly to the epos than those of Alcman, as his dialect also is founded on the epic, to See several grammarians and compilers in rglix. 2.r-/nri%igov, or OiSt t^'io, Irmix'^ou yiyvutrxas- § Several grammarians at the explanation of xaiTu. «w. kind, aie called by the grammarians Stesichorean verses. f Fragm. 12. Mus. Crit. Cantab. Fasc. VI. Fragm. 39. ed. Klein: (IC-JfAUTU. Ktt.XlKO/J,UV V(A- viiv $gvytov ftiXo; iu- povra.;, Stesichorns, also, according to Plutarch, used the igpocno; veftos, which had been • it by Olympus in the Phrygian ap^avla : above, ch. 12. § 7.
 * Marm. Par. ep. f>0. f Ibid. ep. 73.
 * l ^o_o. Several verses of greater or less length, formed of dipodies of this
 * rpiYaiai fvuxvroi.