Ibycos

Ibycos or Ibycus (in Greek old Ἴβυκος / Ibukos ) is a Greek lyric poet born in Rhégium in Grande Greece (today Reggio of Calabria in Italy of the south), at the beginning of sixth century BC

Life

Probably of noble family, one must however hold for legendary the opinion claiming that he would have refused to become Tyran. Towards 560 before J. - C. it was established with Samos at the court of the tyrant Polycrate. One is unaware of how long it remained in Samos as well as the date and the place of his death. Its death gave birth, a few centuries later, with a legend passed in proverb. According to this one it would have been attacked, close to Corinthe, by a troop of brigands who assassinated it after having stripped it. At the time to expire, it took with witness a flight cranes which crossed the sky, and entreated them to carry testimony and to avenge its death. Some time after, assassins being in the theater of Corinth, one of them, while seeing planing cranes above the spectators, ironically known as with the one of its accomplices: “Here are witnesses and avengers of Ibycos” . He was heard of his neighbors who questioned it on this strange word. In front of his disorder one called the soldiers, the culprits was stopped, acknowledged their crime and was carried out. The cranes of Ibycos thus became proverbial, and one speaks about the “witnesses of Ibycos” to characterize an unforeseen testimony which comes to assistance of justice at the last time.

Work

The scientists alexandrines classified works of Ibycos in seven books, of which he arrived to us only one worm hundred. The former Greeks compared it with Stésichore in the treatment of the mythical topics (the Trojan War, the forwarding of the Argonautes). However the known fragments emphasize a great difference, proof of the diversity of style of the poet. What we know of him is lyric poems chorals in which it expresses the taste of the color and the picturesque one. He wrote in an alive way on the capacity of the love and some of these formulas will be taken again by Horace. He also wrote praises, in particular that of Polycrate.

Sources

Dictionary of antiquity, collection Books, ED. Robert Laffont
Dictionary of the authors, collection Books, ED. Robert Laffont
Dictionary of works, collection Books, ED. Robert Laffont
Large universal dictionary of the 19th century, Pierre Larousse, ED. Larousse

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