Gardner, Ernest Arthur: Poet and artist in Greece (London: Duckworth, 1933)

CHAPTER VI

THE LYRIC POETS

jie reputation of Stesichorus and his influence upon


his contemporaries and successors appears to have

been out of all proportion to the scanty remains of
his poems that have survived. Professor Gilbert Murray
says, “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.” Unfortunately it is difficult
to illustrate this statement in detail, for the very reason
that so little is left of his works. But, as Professor Murray
remarks, “ in tracing the development of any myth,
research almost always finds in Stesichorus the main
bridge between the earliest remains of the story and the
form it has in tragedy or in the late epos.” The most
obvious case is the tale of the murder of Agamemnon on
his return from Troy by Clytaemnestra and Algisthus
and the subsequent vengeance of Orestes. This tale is
told three times, with slight variations, in the Odyssey -
once by Nestor to Telemachus (III. 302-312) ; once by
Proteus to Menelaus, who repeats it to Telemachus
(IV. 532) ; and once by the shade of Agamemnon to
Odysseus in the Nekyia (XI. 410). Nestor dwells rather
on the ambition of Algisthus, and regards Clytaemnestra
as more or less the victim of fate ; he also tells of the
vengeance of Orestes. In Menelaus’ account the prepara-
tions of A£gisthus are emphasised, his placing of a sentinel