Ibycus - Life

Life

The Byzantine encyclopaedia Suda represents a good example of a problematic biography, here translated by David Campbell:

Ibycus: son of Phytius; but some say son of the historian Polyzelus of Messana, others son of Cerdas; of Rhegium by birth. From there he went to Samos when it was ruled by the father of of the tyrant Polycrates. This was in the time of Croesus, in the 54th Olympiad (564–60 BC). He was completely crazed with love for boys, and he was the inventor of the so-called sambyke, a kind of triangular cithara. His works are in seven books in the Doric dialect. Captured by bandits in a deserted place he declared that the cranes which happened to be flying overhead would be his avengers; he was murdered, but afterwards one of the bandits saw some cranes in the city and exclaimed, "Look, the avengers of Ibycus!" Someone overheard and followed up his words: the crime was confessed and the bandits paid the penalty; whence the proverbial expression, "the cranes of Ibycus".

Suda's chronology has been dismissed as "muddled" since it makes Ibycus about a generation older than Anacreon, another poet known to have flourished at the court of Polycrates, and it is inconsistent with what we know of the Samian tyrant from Herodotus. Eusebius recorded the poet's first experience of fame ("agnoscitur") somewhere between 542 and 537 BC and this better fits the period of Polycrates' reign. Suda's account seems to be corroborated by a papyrus fragment (P.Oxy.1790), usually ascribed to Ibycus, glorifying a youthful Polycrates, but this was unlikely to have been the Polycrates of Samos and might instead have been his son, mentioned in a different context by Himerius as Polycrates, governor of Rhodes. Suda's list of fathers of Ibycus also presents problems: there were no historians in the early 6th century and Cerdas looks like an invention of the comic stage (it has low associations). There was a Pythagorean lawgiver of Rhegium known as Phytius, but the early 6th century is too early for this candidate also. Ibycus gives no indication of being a Pythagorean himself, except in one poem he identifies the Morning Star with the Evening Star, an identity first popularized by Pythagoras. Suda's extraordinary account of the poet's death is found in other sources, such as Plutarch and Antipater of Sidon and later it inspired Friedrich Schiller to write a ballad called "The Cranes of Ibycus" yet the legend might be derived merely from a play upon the poet's name and the Greek word for the bird ἶβυξ or ibyx—it might even have been told of somebody else originally. Another proverb associated with Ibycus was recorded by Diogenianus: "more antiquated than Ibycus" or "more silly than Ibycus". The proverb was apparently based on an anecdote about Ibycus stupidly or nobly turning down an opportunity to become tyrant of Rhegium in order to pursue a poetic career instead (one modern scholar however infers from his poetry that Ibycus was in fact wise enough to avoid the lure of supreme power, citing as an example Plato's quotation from one of his lyrics: "I am afraid it may be in exchange for some sin before the gods that I get honour from men") There is no other information about Ibycus' activities in the West, apart from an account by Himerius, that he fell from his chariot while travelling between Catana and Himera and injured his hand badly enough to give up playing the lyre "for some considerable time."

Some modern scholars have found in the surviving poetry evidence that Ibycus might have spent time at Sicyon before journeying to Samos—mythological references indicate local knowledge of Sicyon and could even point to the town's alliance with Sparta against Argos and Athens. His depiction of the women of Sparta as "thigh-showing" (quoted by Plutarch as proof of lax morals among the women there) is vivid enough to suggest that he might have composed some verses in Sparta also. It is possible that he left Samos at the same time as Anacreon, on the death of Polycrates, and there is an anonymous poem in the Palatine Anthology celebrating Rhegium as his final resting place, describing a tomb located under an elm, covered in ivy and white reeds.