Ibycus

Ibycus was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Rhegium in Magna Graecia, active during the second half of the 6th century BC, probably at Samos under the tyrant Polycrates. He was numbered among the canonical nine lyric poets by Hellenistic Alexandrian scholars and is remembered for pederastic verses and mythological narratives in the manner of Stesichorus. His work survives only in quotations and papyrus fragments, yet includes what are considered some of the finest examples of Greek poetry.

Life

The biographical tradition for Ibycus is largely legendary and difficult to verify. The Byzantine encyclopedia Suda provides a problematic chronology, placing him about a generation older than Anacreon, another poet at Polycrates’ court, which conflicts with historical accounts of the tyrant’s reign. Eusebius dated his first recognition to between 542 and 537 BC, a period that better aligns with Polycrates. A papyrus fragment often attributed to Ibycus glorifies a youthful Polycrates, but this may refer to the tyrant’s son, a governor of Rhodes.

The Suda’s list of Ibycus’ possible fathers includes names that appear invented or anachronistic. One poem identifies the Morning Star with the Evening Star, an idea popularized by Pythagoras, though Ibycus shows no other Pythagorean influence. He provides the earliest known literary reference to Orpheus, calling him “Orpheus famous-of-name” in a two-word fragment. A legend about his death, in which cranes revealed his murderers, inspired Friedrich Schiller’s ballad “The Cranes of Ibycus,” but may derive from a pun on his name.

Another proverb, “more antiquated than Ibycus,” stems from an anecdote that he refused an opportunity to become tyrant of Rhegium to pursue poetry. Himerius records that he once injured his hand falling from a chariot between Catana and Himera, preventing him from playing the lyre for some time. His poetry shows possible knowledge of Sicyon and Sparta, and he may have left Samos after Polycrates’ death. An anonymous poem in the Palatine Anthology describes his tomb in Rhegium under an elm, covered in ivy and white reeds.