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49-847: Her brother-consort is Hyperion , a Titan and god of the sun , and together they are the parents of Helios (the Sun ), Selene (the Moon ), and Eos (the Dawn ). She seems to be the same figure as Aethra , who is the consort of Hyperion and mother of his children in some accounts. Like her husband, Theia features scarcely in myth, being mostly important for the children she bore, though she appears in some texts and rare traditions. The name Theia alone means simply "goddess" or "divine"; Theia Euryphaessa ( Θεία Εὐρυφάεσσα ) brings overtones of extent ( εὐρύς , eurys , "wide", root: εὐρυ-/εὐρε- ) and brightness ( φάος , phaos , "light", root: φαεσ-). Early accounts gave her

98-575: A bent old man holding a book. Eusebius dated his floruit in Olympiad 42.2 (611/10 BC) and his death in Olympiad 55.1 (560/59 BC). The Suda' s claim that Hesiod was the father of Stesichorus can be dismissed as "fantasy" yet it is also mentioned by Tzetzes and the Hesiodic scholiast Proclus (one of them however named the mother of Stesichorus via Hesiod as Ctimene and the other as Clymene). According to another tradition known to Cicero , Stesichorus

147-438: A close rival of Homer; but he is redundant and diffuse, a fault to be sure but explained by the abundance of what he had to say. —Quintilian In a similar vein, Dionysius of Halicarnassus commends Stesichorus for "...the magnificence of the settings of his subject matter; in them he has preserved the traits and reputations of his characters", and Longinus puts him in select company with Herodotus , Archilochus and Plato as

196-514: A description of the river Himera as well as praise for the town named after it, and his poem Geryoneis included a description of Pallantium in Arcadia. His possible exile from Arcadia is attributed by one modern scholar to rivalry between Tegea and Sparta . Traditional accounts indicate that he was politically active in Magna Graeca. Aristotle mentions two public speeches by Stesichorus: one to

245-487: A goddess of glittering in particular and of glory in general, but Pindar's allusion to her as "Theia of many names" is telling, since it suggests assimilation, referring not only to similar mother-of-the-sun goddesses such as Phoebe and Leto , but perhaps also to more universalizing mother-figures such as Rhea and Cybele . Furthermore, a scholium on those lines wrote ἐκ Θείας καὶ Ὑπερίονος ὁ Ἥλιος, ἐκ δὲ Ἡλίου ὁ χρυσός , "The Sun came from Theia and Hyperion , and from

294-824: A primal origin, said to be the eldest daughter of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky). She is thus the sister of the Titans ( Oceanus , Crius , Hyperion , Iapetus , Coeus , Themis , Rhea , Phoebe , Tethys , Mnemosyne , Cronus , and sometimes of Dione ), the Cyclopes , the Hecatoncheires , the Giants , the Meliae , the Erinyes , and is the half-sister of Aphrodite (in some versions), Typhon , Python , Pontus , Thaumas , Phorcys , Nereus , Eurybia , and Ceto . By her brother-husband Hyperion she

343-473: A quote by the geographer Strabo , is characteristic of the "descriptive fulness" of his style: A nineteenth century translation imaginatively fills in the gaps while communicating something of the richness of the language: See The Queen's Speech in the Lille fragment for more on Stesichorus's style. The Homeric qualities of Stesichorus' poetry are demonstrated in a fragment of his poem Geryoneis describing

392-457: A thing of beauty—the poppy has not wilted or died. Stesichorus adapted the simile to restore Death's ugliness while still retaining the poignancy of the moment: The mutual self-reflection of the two passages is part of the novel aesthetic experience that Stesichorus here puts into play. The enduring freshness of his art, in spite of its epic traditions, is borne out by Ammianus Marcellinus in an anecdote about Socrates: happening to overhear, on

441-469: A youthful giant next to Helios is conjectured to be his mother Theia. An unorthodox version of the myth presented by Diodorus identified Theia as Basileia ("queen", "royal palace") with the following account: Theia's mythological role as the mother of the Moon goddess Selene is alluded to in the application of the name to a hypothetical planet that, according to the giant impact hypothesis , collided with

490-563: Is a possible attestation of his name in Linear B ( Mycenaean Greek ) in the lacunose form ]pe-rjo-[ (Linear B: ] 𐀟𐁊 -[), found on the KN E 842 tablet (reconstructed [u]-pe-rjo-[ne] ) though it has been suggested that the name actually reads " Apollo " ( [a]-pe-rjo-[ne] ). Hyperion is one of the twelve or thirteen Titans , the children of Gaia and Uranus . In the Theogony , Uranus imprisoned all

539-407: Is often referred to as "Hyperion's bright son." According to the rationalizing historian Diodorus Siculus , Hyperion was the name of the first person to understand the movement of the sun and moon, and their effect on the seasons, and explains that, because of this, he was said to be their "father": Of Hyperion we are told that he was the first to understand, by diligent attention and observation,

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588-779: Is possible that these are the works of another Stesichorus belonging to the fourth century, mentioned in the Marmor Parium . Bovillae , about twelve miles outside Rome, was the original site of a monument dating from the Augustan period and now located in the Capitoline Museum . The stone monument features scenes from the fall of Troy, depicted in low relief, and an inscription: Ιλίου Πέρσις κατα Στησίχορον ('Sack of Troy according to Stesichorus'). Scholars are divided as to whether or not it accurately depicts incidents described by Stesichorus in his poem Sack of Troy . There is, for example,

637-591: Is repeated by Pliny the Elder but it was the epic qualities of his work that most impressed ancient commentators, though with some reservations on the part of Quintilian : The greatness of Stesichorus' genius is shown among other things by his subject-matter: he sings of the most important wars and the most famous commanders and sustains on his lyre the weight of epic poetry. In both their actions and their speeches he gives due dignity to his characters, and if only he had shown restraint he could possibly have been regarded as

686-576: Is the mother of Helios , Selene , and Eos . Robert Graves relates that later, Theia is referred to as the cow-eyed Euryphaessa who gave birth to Helios in myths dating to classical antiquity . Once paired in later myths with her Titan brother Hyperion as her husband, "mild-eyed Euryphaessa, the far-shining one" of the Homeric Hymn to Helios , was said to be the mother of Helios (the Sun ), Selene (the Moon ), and Eos (the Dawn ). Gaius Valerius Catullus described those three lights of

735-546: The Iliad and elsewhere in the Odyssey , Helios is also called "Helios Hyperion" with "Hyperion" here being used either as a patronymic or as an other epithet. In the Homeric epics, and in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo , besides being called "Helios", Hyperion is sometimes also called simply "Hyperion". In later sources the two sun-gods are distinctly father and son. In literature, the sun

784-550: The Earth and created the Moon , paralleling the mythological Theia's role as the mother of Selene. Theia's alternate name Euryphaessa has been adopted for a species of Australian leafhoppers Dayus euryphaessa (Kirkaldy, 1907). A Theia figure has been found at the Necropolis of Cyrene . Hyperion (Titan) In Greek mythology , Hyperion ( / h aɪ ˈ p ɪər i ə n / ; Ancient Greek : Ὑπερίων , 'he who goes before')

833-881: The Lille Stesichorus ), have led to some improvements in our understanding of his work, confirming his role as a link between Homer 's epic narrative and the lyric narrative of poets like Pindar . Stesichorus also exercised an important influence on the representation of myth in 6th century art, and on the development of Athenian dramatic poetry. Stesichorus was born in Metauros (modern Gioia Tauro) in Calabria , Southern Italy c. 630 BC and died in Katane (modern Catania ) in Sicily in 555 BC. Some say that he came from Himera in Sicily, but that

882-484: The Suda' s dates "fit reasonably well" with other indications of Stesichorus's life-span — for example, they are consistent with a claim elsewhere in Suda that the poet Sappho was his contemporary, along with Alcaeus and Pittacus , and also with the claim, attested by other sources, that Phalaris was his contemporary. Aristotle quoted a speech the poet is supposed to have made to the people of Himera warning them against

931-595: The 'most Homeric' of authors. Modern scholars tend to accept the general thrust of the ancient comments – even the 'fault' noted by Quintilian gets endorsement: 'longwindedness', as one modern scholar calls it, citing, as proof of it, the interval of 400 lines separating Geryon's death from his eloquent anticipation of it. Similarly, "the repetitiveness and slackness of the style" of the recently discovered Lille papyrus has even been interpreted by one modern scholar as proof of Stesichorean authorship – though others originally used it as an argument against. Possibly Stesichorus

980-651: The Greek West . His poetry reveals both Doric and Ionian influences and this is consistent with the Suda' a claim that his birthplace was either Metauria or Himera, both of which were founded by colonists of mixed Ionian/Doric descent. On the other hand, a Doric/Ionian flavour was fashionable among later poets — it is found in the 'choral' lyrics of the Ionian poets Simonides and Bacchylides — and it might have been fashionable even in Stesichorus's own day. His poetry included

1029-466: The Sun came gold ", denoting a special connection of Theia, the goddess of sight and brilliance, with gold as the mother of Helios the sun. Theia was regarded as the goddess from which all light proceeded. Plutarch wrote a fable-like story, The Moon and her Mother (which is sometimes categorized as an Aesop's fable ), where Theia's daughter Selene asked her mother to weave her a garment to fit her measure;

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1078-517: The Trojan War and thus restoring himself to full sight. The ancients associated the lyrical qualities of Stesichorus with the voice of the nightingale, as in this quote from the Palatine Anthology : "...at his birth, when he had just reached the light of day, a nightingale, travelling through the air from somewhere or other, perched unnoticed on his lips and struck up her clear song." The account

1127-529: The beginning of the cosmos. Hyperion and Helios were both sun-gods . Early sources sometimes present the two as distinct personages, with Hyperion being the father of Helios, but sometimes they were apparently identified, with "Hyperion" being simply a title of, or another name for, Helios himself. Hyperion is Helios' father in Homer 's Odyssey , Hesiod 's Theogony , and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter . But in

1176-600: The children that Gaia bore him, before he was overthrown. According to Apollodorus , Uranus only imprisoned the Hecatoncheires and the Cyclopes but not the Titans, until Gaia persuaded her six Titan sons to overthrow their father Uranus and "they, all but Ocean, attacked him" as Cronus castrated him. Afterwards, in the words of Hesiod , Hyperion subjected his sister Theia to his love, and fathered three children with her, who became

1225-507: The cult of Philoctetes at Sybaris , Diomedes at Thurii and the Atreidae at Tarentum . It was also a sympathetic environment for his most famous poem, The Palinode, composed in praise of Helen, an important cult figure in the Doric diaspora. On the other hand, the western Greeks were not very different from their eastern counterparts and his poetry cannot be regarded exclusively as a product of

1274-535: The death of the monster Geryon. A scholiast writing in a margin on Hesiod's Theogony noted that Stesichorus gave the monster wings, six hands and six feet, whereas Hesiod himself had only described it as 'three-headed'. yet Stesichorus adapted Homeric motifs to create a humanized portrait of the monster, whose death in battle mirrors the death of Gorgythion in Homer's Iliad , translated here by Richmond Lattimore : Homer here transforms Gorgythion's death in battle into

1323-580: The eve of his own execution, the rendition of a song of Stesichorus, the old philosopher asked to be taught it: "So that I may know something more when I depart from life." According to the Suda , the works of Stesichorus were collected in 26 books, but each of these was probably a long, narrative poem. The titles of more than half of them are recorded by ancient sources: Some poems were wrongly attributed to Stesichorus by ancient sources, including bucolic poems and some love songs such as Calyce and Rhadine . It

1372-530: The form of epic poetry – works such as the Palinode were also a recasting of epic material: in that version of the Trojan War, the combatants fought over a phantom Helen while the real Helen either stayed home or went to Egypt (see a summary below ). The 'Lyric Age' of Greece was in part self-discovery and self-expression – as in the works of Alcaeus and Sappho – but a concern for heroic values and epic themes still endured: Stesichorus' citharodic narrative points to

1421-407: The heavens as "Theia's illustrious progeny" in the sixty-sixth of his carmina . Pindar praises Theia in his Fifth Isthmian ode: Mother of the Sun, Theia of many names, for your sake men honor gold as more powerful than anything else; and through the value you bestow on them, O queen, ships contending on the sea and yoked teams of horses in swift-whirling contests become marvels. She seems here

1470-438: The lights of heaven: Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon), and Eos (Dawn). As is the case for most of the Titans, there are no myths or functions for Hyperion. He seems to exist only to provide a father for the three celestial deities. As a Titan, one of the oldest generation of gods, Hyperion was a fitting father for these three sky-gods who, as elements of the natural world, must have been conceived of as having come into being near

1519-461: The mother, who goes unnamed, then replied that she was unable to do so, as Selene kept changing shape and size, sometimes full, then crescent-shaped and others yet half her size, never staying the same. According to sixth century BC lyric poet Stesichorus , Theia lives with her son in his palace. In the east Gigantomachy frieze of the Pergamon Altar , the figure of the goddess preserved fighting

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1568-557: The movement of both the sun and the moon and the other stars, and the seasons as well, in that they are caused by these bodies, and to make these facts known to others; and that for this reason he was called the father of these bodies, since he had begotten, so to speak, the speculation about them and their nature. Diodorus also recorded an unorthodox version of the myth, in which Hyperion married his sister Basileia and had two children by her, Helios and Selene; their brothers, envious of their happy issue and fearful that Hyperion would divert

1617-400: The name wasn't unique — there seems to have been more than one poet of this name (see Spurious works below). The Suda in yet another entry refers to the fact, now verified by Papyrus fragments, that Stesichorus composed verses in units of three stanzas (strophe, antistrophe and epode), a format later followed by poets such as Bacchylides and Pindar . Suda claims this three-stanza format

1666-402: The people of Himera, warning them against Phalaris, and another to the people of Locri , warning them against presumption (possibly referring to their war against Rhegium ). Philodemus believed that the poet once stood between two armies (which two, he doesn't say) and reconciled them with a song — but there is a similar story about Terpander . According to the 9th century scholar Photius ,

1715-460: The philosopher Plato the poet's father was named Euphemus, but an inscription on a herm from Tivoli listed him as Euclides. The poet's mathematically inclined brother was named Mamertinus by the Suda but a scholiast in a commentary on Euclid named him Mamercus. Stesichorus's lyrical treatment of epic themes was well-suited to a western Greek audience, owing to the popularity of hero-cults in southern Italy and Magna Graeca , as for example

1764-570: The royal power to himself, conspired and killed Hyperion along with his two children (which then went on to transform into the Sun and the Moon), leaving Basileia in great distress. Stesichorus Stesichorus ( / s t ɪ ˈ s ɪ k ə r ə s / ; Greek : Στησίχορος , Stēsichoros ; c. 630 – 555 BC) was a Greek lyric poet native of Metauros ( Gioia Tauro today). He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres, and for some ancient traditions about his life, such as his opposition to

1813-586: The same light until she magically punished him with blindness for blaspheming her in one of his poems. According to a colourful account recorded by Pausanias , she later sent an explanation to Stesichorus via a man from Croton , who was on a pilgrimage to White Island in the Black Sea (near the mouth of the Blue Danube), and it was in response to this that Stesichorus composed the Palinode, absolving her of all blame for

1862-433: The simultaneous coexistence of different literary genres and currents in an age of great artistic energy and experimentation. It is one of the exciting qualities of early Greek culture that forms continue to evolve, but the old traditions still remain strong as points of stability and proud community, unifying but not suffocating. —Charles Segal. The following description of the birthplace of the monster Geryon , preserved as

1911-572: The term eight all (used by gamblers at dice) derives from an expensive burial the poet received outside Catana, including a monument with eight pillars, eight steps and eight corners, but the 3rd century grammarian Julius Pollux attributed the same term to an 'eight all ways' tomb given to the poet outside Himera. Many modern scholars don't accept the Suda' s claim that Stesichorus was named for his innovations in choral poetry — there are good reasons to believe that his lyrical narratives were composed for solo performance (see Works below). Moreover

1960-408: The tyrannical ambitions of Phalaris. The Byzantine grammarian Tzetzes also listed him as a contemporary of the tyrant and yet made him a contemporary of the philosopher Pythagoras as well. According to Lucian , the poet lived to 85 years of age. Hieronymus declared that his poems became sweeter and more swan-like as he approached death, and Cicero knew of a bronzed statue representing him as

2009-588: The tyrant Phalaris , and the blindness he is said to have incurred and cured by composing verses first insulting and then flattering to Helen of Troy . He was ranked among the nine lyric poets esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria , and yet his work attracted relatively little interest among ancient commentators, so that remarkably few fragments of his poetry now survive. As David Campbell notes: "Time has dealt more harshly with Stesichorus than with any other major lyric poet." Recent discoveries, recorded on Egyptian papyrus (notably and controversially,

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2058-468: The versatility of lyric meter is suited to solo performance with self-accompaniment on the lyre – which is how Homer himself delivered poetry. Whether or not it was a choral technique, the triadic structure of Stesichorean lyrics allowed for novel arrangements of dactylic meter – the dominant meter in his poems and also the defining meter of Homeric epic – thus allowing for Homeric phrasing to be adapted to new settings. However, Stesichorus did more than recast

2107-422: Was an expert in geometry and a second brother Helianax, a law-giver. He was a lyric poet. His poems are in the Doric dialect and in 26 books. They say that he was blinded for writing abuse of Helen and recovered his sight after writing an encomium of Helen, the Palinode, as the result of a dream. He was called Stesichorus because he was the first to establish ( stesai ) a chorus of singers to the cithara ; his name

2156-455: Was due to him moving from Metauros to Himera later in life. When exiled from Pallantium in Arcadia he came to Katane ( Catania ) and when he died there was buried in front of the gate which is called Stesichorean after him. In date he was later than the lyric poet Alcman , since he was born in the 37th Olympiad (632/28 BC). He died in the 56th Olympiad (556/2 BC). He had a brother Mamertinus who

2205-488: Was even more Homeric than ancient commentators realized – they had assumed that he composed verses for performance by choirs (the triadic structure of the stanzas, comprising strophe, antistrophe and epode, is consistent with choreographed movement) but a poem such as the Geryoneis included some 1500 lines and it probably required about four hours to perform – longer than a chorus might reasonably be expected to dance. Moreover,

2254-557: Was one of the twelve Titan children of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky). With his sister, the Titaness Theia , Hyperion fathered Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon) and Eos (Dawn). Hyperion was, along with his son Helios, a personification of the sun, with the two sometimes identified. John Keats 's abandoned epic poem Hyperion is among the literary works that feature the figure. "Hyperion" means "he that walks on high" or simply "the god above", often joined with "Helios". There

2303-464: Was originally Tisias. The specific dates given by the Suda for Stesichorus have been dismissed by one modern scholar as "specious precision" — its dates for the floruit of Alcman (the 27th Olympiad), the life of Stesichorus (37th–56th Olympiads) and the birth of Simonides (the 56th Olympiad) virtually lay these three poets end-to-end, a coincidence that seems to underscore a convenient division between old and new styles of poetry. Nevertheless,

2352-477: Was popularly referred to as the three of Stesichorus in a proverbial saying rebuking cultural buffoons ("You don't even know the three of Stesichorus!"). According to one modern scholar, however, this saying could instead refer to the following three lines of his poem The Palinode , addressed to Helen of Troy: Helen of Troy's bad character was a common theme among poets such as Sappho and Alcaeus and, according to various ancient accounts, Stesichorus viewed her in

2401-399: Was the grandson of Hesiod yet even this verges on anachronism since Hesiod was composing verses around 700 BC. Stesichorus might be regarded as Hesiod's literary "heir" (his treatment of Helen in the Palinode, for example, may have owed much to Hesiod's Catalogue of Women ) and maybe this was the source of confusion about a family relationship. According to Stephanus of Byzantium and

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