Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/223

201 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 201 quently celebrated in Magna Grsecia to the Greek heroes, especially to those of the Trojan cycle *. The entire tone in which Stesichorus treated these mythic narratives was also quite different from the epic. It is evident from the fragments that he dwelt upon a few brilliant adventures, in which the force and the glory of the heroes was, as it were, concentrated ; and that he gave the reins to his fancy. Tlius, in an extant fragment, Hercules is de- scribed as returning to the god of the sun (Helios), on the goblet on which he had swum to the island of Geryoneus ; " Helios, the Hype- rionid, stepped into the golden goblet, in order to go, over the ocean, to the sacred depths of the dark night to his mother, and wife, and dear children ; while the son of Zeus (Hercules) entered into the laurel grove f." In another, the dream of Clytaemnestra, in the night before she was killed, is described: "A serpent seemed to approach her, its crest covered with blood ; but, of a sudden, the king of Pleisthenes race (Agamemnon) came out of it J." In general, a lyric poet like Stesi- chorus was more inclined than an epic poet to alter the current legend ; since his object was not so much mere narration, as the praise of indi- vidual heroes, and the mythus was always introduced with a view to its application. As a proof of this assertion, it is sufficient to refer to the story, celebrated in antiquity, of Stesichorus having, in a poem (pro- bably the destruction of Troy), attributed all the sufferings of the Trojan war to Helen § ; but the deified heroine having, as it was supposed, deprived him of his sight, as a punishment for this insult, he composed his famous Palinodia, in which he said that the Helen who had been seen in Troy, and for whom the Greeks and Trojans fought during so many years, was a mere shadow (a(Tfia, eicwXoi') ; while the true Helen had never embarked from Greece. Even this, however, is not to be considered as pure invention ; there were in Laconia popular legends of Helen's having appeared as a shade long after her death ||, like her brothers Castor and Pollux ; and it is possible that Stesichorus may have met with some similar story. Stesichorus simply conceived Helen to have remained in Greece; he did not suppose her to have gone to Egypt %. Laertiads (Pseud-Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. 114); in Metapontum to the Nelids (Strabo VI. p. 263,) &c. f Fragm. 3. (10. ed. Klein). I Fragm. inc. 1. (43. Klein). This fragment too is in a lyric metre, and ought not to be forced into an elegiac distich. § Hence in the Iliac table, Menelaus is represented as attempting to stab Helen whom he has just recovered ; while she flies lor protection to the temple of Aphrodite. ^[ Others sir, po-ed that Proteus, the marine demigod skilled in metamorphoses, went to the island of Pharos, and there formed a false Helen with which he deceived Paris; a version of the story which even the ancient Scholiasts have con-
 * Thus in Tarentum huyitrpo) were offered to the Atrids, Tydids, Alcids.
 * Herod. VI. 61.