[172] Herodot. i, 23; Suidas, v. Ἀρίων; Pindar, Olymp. xiii, 25. [173] Aristot. Poetic. c. 6, ἐγέννησαν τὴν ποίησιν ἐκ τῶν αὐτοσχεδιασμάτων; again, to the same effect, _ibid._ c. 9. The date of Arion seems about 600 B. C., shortly after Alkman: that of Stesichorus is a few years later. To the latter the Greek chorus owed a high degree of improvement, and in particular the last finished distribution of its performance into the strophê, the antistrophê, and the epôdus: the turn, the return, and the rest,—the rhythm and metre of the song during each strophê corresponded with that during the antistrophê, but was varied during the epôdus, and again varied during the following strophês. Until this time the song had been monostrophic, consisting of nothing more than one uniform stanza, repeated from the beginning to the end of the composition;[174] so that we may easily see how vast was the new complication and difficulty introduced by Stesichorus,—not less for the performers than for the composer, himself at that time the teacher and trainer of performers. Both this poet and his contemporary the flute-player Sakadas of Argos,—who gained the prize at the first three Pythian games founded after the Sacred War,—seem to have surpassed their predecessors in the breadth of subject which they embraced, borrowing from the inexhaustible province of ancient legend, and expanding the choric song into a well-sustained epical narrative.[175] Indeed, these Pythian games opened a new career to musical composers just at the time when Sparta began to be closed against musical novelties. [174] Alkman slightly departed from this rule: in one of his compositions of fourteen strophês, the last seven were in a different metre from the first seven (Hephæstion, c. xv, p. 134, Gaisf.; Hermann, Elementa Doctrin. Metricæ, c. xvii, sect. 595). Ἀλκμανικὴ καινοτομία καὶ Στησιχόρειος (Plutarch, De Musicâ, p. 1135). [175] Pausanias, vi, 14, 4; x, 7, 3. Sakadas, as well as Stesichorus, composed an Ἰλίου πέρσις (Athenæus, xiii, p. 609). “Stesichorum (observes Quintilian, x, 1) quam sit ingenio validus, materiæ quoque ostendunt, maxima bella et clarissimos canentem duces, et epici carminis onera lyrâ sustinentem. Reddit enim personis in agendo simul loquendoque debitam dignitatem: ac si tenuisset modum, videtur æmulari proximus Homerum potuisse: sed redundat, atque effunditur: quod, ut est reprehendendum, ita copiæ vitium est.” Simonidês of Keôs (Frag. 19. ed. Bergk) puts Homer and Stesichorus together: see the epigram of Antipater in the Anthologia, t. i, p. 328, ed. Jacobs, and Dio Chrysostom. Or. 55, vol. ii, p. 284, Reisk. Compare Kleine, Stesichori Fragment. pp. 30-34 (Berlin 1828), and O. Müller, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. xiv, sect. 5. The musical composers of Argos are affirmed by Herodotus to have been the most renowned in Greece, half a century after Sakadas (Her. iii, 131).