creates sympathy by developing an Iliadic simile (8. 306-8):
and then Geryon's neck leaned over
to one side, as when a poppy
disfiguring its soft body
suddenly casts away its leaves(Suppl. 15 col. ii, 14-17)
Stesichorus' metre, although dactylic, like Homer's, is different in important ways. Units of varying length
form a strophe: this is repeated (antistrophe), then follows a shorter system (epode) giving a triadic
structure (in Geryoneis twenty-six lines) repeated throughout the song. Ancients credited Stesichorus with
this structure's invention and classed his songs as choral. This classification has been challenged, and it is
disputed whether his songs were sung by choirs or, like Homeric epic, by the poet himself.
Before considering poets whose songs were certainly choral, we note another point that groups
Stesichorus with them and not with Homer. Whereas Homer suppresses his personality, choral songs
regularly highlight poets' views of life and their creative role. Thus Stesichorus' second Helen: his first
told the fable convenue, but, doubtless eager to exploit a box-office success, he completely changed the
story in the second, sending Helen to Egypt and only a phantom to Troy, and explicitly criticized Homer
and Hesiod for their mistakes, claiming that his own information came from Helen's angry appearance to
him in a dream (frs. 192-3).
Assertion of moral outlook and mythological variants becomes most prominent in Pindar. But already
about 600 B.C. Alcman deployed maxims to point up narration of myth by his chorus of Spartan girls:
'Let none from mankind fly up to heaven' (fr. 1. 16) and, rounding off his myth, 'There is some
punishment from gods: but blessed is he who in good heart weaves his day tearless' (fr. 1.36-9). Fr. 1,
once probably 140 lines, is Alcman's only substantial monument. Of its first part only scraps of thirty-five
lines survive, glimpses of a myth involving sexual violence. The second, largely complete, turns abruptly
to praise two girls, apparently chorus leaders: 'but I sing of the light of Agido: I see her like the sun,
whom Agido calls to shine as our witness' (fr. 1.39-43). Brilliant light yields to racehorses as the image
compared, then returns with Hagesichora's golden hair and silver face. There follows praise of eight other
singers, some merely named, all set clearly below the leaders. The last two systems of the poem, even if
complete, would still leave puzzlement about the local deities alluded to and the ceremony being
performed (simply a rite de passage}) in which girls sing of gods, heroes, and themselves. Puzzling too
are innuendos of sexual attraction towards their leaders: 'Nor will you say "May I get Astaphis, and may
Philylla look upon me, and Damareta, and desirable Wianthemis" - but it is Hagesichora who wastes me
away' (fr. 1. 74-7). These go even further in another choral song enthusiastically praising Astymeloisa's
charms (fr-3).
Songs for girl choruses were still composed by Pindar. But the form which dominates his and
Bacchylides' remains is the victory song, commissioned to celebrate competitors' successes at the great
Panhellenic festivals. About the lesser poet, Bacchylides of Ceos (active C. 485 - 450 BC), we knew little