Biography
Details of Stesichorus's life are as fragmentary as his verse and the historical sources are often contradictory. A useful example is provided by the Suda, a 10th century Byzantine encyclopaedia, here reproduced in an English translation from a Loeb edition.
Stesichorus: Son of Euphorbus or Euphemus or according to others of Euclides or Euetes or Hesiod. From the city of Himera in Sicily; at any rate he is called the Himeraean; but some say he is from Metauros(Modern Gioia Tauro) in Southern Italy. Others say that when exiled from Pallantium in Arcadia he came to Catana and that he died there and 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 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 was originally Tisias. – Suda
The main points addressed by the Suda are expanded and analysed under the following headings:
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