Inventions

Sikyon was the place of many major and minor inventions and innovations. Among the major ones Tragedy and modern Painting stand out. Ancient sources speak of Comedy also, but unfortunately there is no concrete  evidence to support this.

Many innovations in metallurgy made possible the creation of masterpieces, in statues and metal pottery. Already by the seventh century BC, they were able to construct the "thalamoi", rooms out of bronze, which they were dedicated to Delphi.
In sculpture key inventions made possible the creation of bronze statues.
Butades the Sikyonian potter, who according to Pliny the Elder, invented the modeling figures in clay, from which the sculpture in bronze originated.
Lysistratos of Sikyon, sculptor and brother of Lysippos, was the first man who made a preliminary cast by fitting plaster upon a human face (4th century BC).

In painting, Pliny tell us that Telephanes was the first to improve or invent drawing and Kraton of Sikyon according to Athenagoras, invented the "grafike", drawing with the use of color on a board.
Pausias of Sikyon was the first to use extensively the encaustic technique in painting, which he  brought it to perfection, though the technique was used earlier in statues.
Sikyon had the first State Gallery in Greece, with a huge collection of paintings, which were sold mainly in Egypt. Many paintings were also taken to Rome.

Many inventions occurred also in Music and Dance. Amphion of Sikyon invented the singing with kithara and Lysander of Sikyon the solo kithara and the changing of instruments during the performance of music.
The first orchestra playing (enaulon kitharisin) took place here by the pupils of Epigonos who made use the invention of Lysander.
Epigonos was the inventor of Epigonion (epi gonatos), a kind of kithara with forty strings that was placed and played at one's knees.
Another inventor was Ibykos who made the musical instrument Sambyke.
The many inventions in music were parallel with these of dance. The local dance known as Aleter was a sober kind of dance. Another dance, the one Hippokleides danced at the feast given by Kleisthenes and lost the hand of his daughter Agariste, was the uncontrolled and comic, Kordax.
The dances which involved the throwing of a ball, as for example the one mentioned by Homer in his Odyssey, in which Nausika was dancing with other girls, was a Sikyonian invention. Sikyon had schools teaching dancing (chorodidaskaleia).

Sikyon had also a museum from very ancient times, in the Temple of Apollo which housed some of the best known relics and dedications, between other:

• The Agamemnon's sword and shield.
• A chest belonging to Adrastos, which nobody had opened.
• The spear used by Meleager to kill the kalydonian boar.
• The Odysseus cloak and breastplate and a sample of Penelope's weaving.
• The kettle that Pelias was boiled in by Medeia.
• The Argonauts oars.
• The flutes of Marsyas (the satyr who was flayed alive for daring to compete with Apollo in a musical contest).
• Athena's ballot cast to acquit Orestes on the charge of matricide.