STESICHORUS, ste-sik'6-r0s (Lat., from Gk. Zrnalxopos) (c.640-555 n.c.). A famous Greek lyric poet, born in the Locrian Mataurns, hut considered as a Ilimenean, since lie spent the greater part of his life in the city of Ilimera, of which his father seems to have been one of the early settlers. It is reported that he was at first the friend of Phalaris, the tyrant of Agri gelatin), but that later, recognizing the cruel character of that tyrant, he warned his fellow citizens against his schemes by telling them the fable of the horse that gave himself up to man in order to revenge himself on the stag. The Himencans did not listen to his advice and he was compelled to lice to Catana, where he died. The Himenrans, however, in later times honored him with a statue which was seen by Cicero; his figure was also stamped on their coins. A famous story connected with Stesichorns relates that he was struck with blindness because of his attack on Helen, but recovered his sight after he had published a recantation in which he declared it was only the shade of Helen, not Helen herself, that went to Troy.
In his hands the religious hymn, which had been cultivated by previous lyricists, was some what secularized. The content also was epic,
although the form continued to be that which had been established for melic verse. Tie treated in his Destruction of Troy the story of .Eneas's wanderings, which thereafter was established in literary tradition. He also employed folk-tales and was the forerunner of the Greek romance in that he established in Greek literature the im personal love poem, and he was the first to give literary treatment to the Sicilian story of Daph nis, which was later handled by Theoernus and other bucolic poets. His dialect was a com bination of epic with Doric. He also contributed to the development of the strophic and epodic structure of lyric poetry. His poems were writ ten in strophe, antistrophe, and epode, and this arrangement became the norm for lyric poetry, which was thereafter changed only in minor de tails. The fragments are published by Bergk, Poetce Lyriei Orwei (Leipzig, 1852). Consult, also : Wel cker, Stcsichorus' Kleine S'ehrif ten (Bonn, 1884) ; Rizzo, Qucstioni Stesiehoree (Messina, 1S95).