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The metres specially named 'Stesichorean'-though others had used them before Stesichorus-show this half-epic character. They are made up of halves of the epic hexameter, interspersed with short variatios-epitrites, anapaests, or mere syncopae-just enough to break the dactylic swing, to make the verse lyrical. His diction suits these long stately lines; it is not passionate, not very songful, but easily followed, and suitable for narrative. This helps to explain why so important a writer has left so few fragments. He was not difficult enough for the grammarian; he was not line by line exquisite enough for the later lover of letters. The ancient critics, amid all their praises of Stesichorus, complain that he is long; the Oresteia alone took two books, and doubtless the Sack of Ilion was equal to it. His whole works in Alexandrian times filled twenty-six books. He had the fulness of an epic writer, not the vivid splendour that Pindar had taught Greece to expet in a lyric. Yet he gained an extraordinary position (The coins of Himera bearing the figure of Stesichorus are later than 241 B.C., when he had become a legend. Cf. also Cic. Verr.ii.35.). Simonides, who would not over-estimate one whom he hoped to rival, couples him with Homer-"So sang to the nations Homer and Stesichorus." In Athens of the fifth century he was universally known. Socrates praised him. Aristophanes ridiculed him. "Not to know three lines of Stesichorus" was a proverbial description of illiteracy (No reference, as used to be thought, to the strophe, antistophe, epode of choric music). There was scarcely a poet then living who was not influenced by Stesichorus; scarcely a painter or potter who did not, consciously or unconsciously, represent his version of the great sagas. In tracing the historical [104]
