The old oracle quoted in Demosthen. cont. Meidiam, about the Dionysia at Athens, enjoins—Διονύσῳ δημοτελῆ ἱερὰ τελεῖν, καὶ κρατῆρα κεράσαι, καὶ χοροὺς ἱστάναι.
[172] Herodot. i, 23; Suidas, v. Ἀρίων; Pindar, Olymp. xiii, 25.
[173] Aristot. Poetic. c. 6, ἐγέννησαν τὴν ποίησιν ἐκ τῶν αὐτοσχεδιασμάτων; again, to the same effect, ibid. c. 9.
[174] Alkman slightly departed from this rule: in one of his compositions of fourteen strophês, the last seven were in a different metre from the first seven (Hephæstion, c. xv, p. 134, Gaisf.; Hermann, Elementa Doctrin. Metricæ, c. xvii, sect. 595). Ἀλκμανικὴ καινοτομία καὶ Στησιχόρειος (Plutarch, De Musicâ, p. 1135).
[175] Pausanias, vi, 14, 4; x, 7, 3. Sakadas, as well as Stesichorus, composed an Ἰλίου πέρσις (Athenæus, xiii, p. 609).
“Stesichorum (observes Quintilian, x, 1) quam sit ingenio validus, materiæ quoque ostendunt, maxima bella et clarissimos canentem duces, et epici carminis onera lyrâ sustinentem. Reddit enim personis in agendo simul loquendoque debitam dignitatem: ac si tenuisset modum, videtur æmulari proximus Homerum potuisse: sed redundat, atque effunditur: quod, ut est reprehendendum, ita copiæ vitium est.”
Simonidês of Keôs (Frag. 19. ed. Bergk) puts Homer and Stesichorus together: see the epigram of Antipater in the Anthologia, t. i, p. 328, ed. Jacobs, and Dio Chrysostom. Or. 55, vol. ii, p. 284, Reisk. Compare Kleine, Stesichori Fragment. pp. 30-34 (Berlin 1828), and O. Müller, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. xiv, sect. 5.
The musical composers of Argos are affirmed by Herodotus to have been the most renowned in Greece, half a century after Sakadas (Her. iii, 131).
[176] Horat. Epistol. i, 19, 23.
[177] Sappho, Fragm. 93, ed. Bergk. See also Plehn, Lesbiaca, pp. 145-165. Respecting the poetesses, two or three of whom were noted, contemporary with Sappho, see Ulrici, Gesch. der Hellen. Poesie, vol. ii, p. 370.