He composed like Stesichorus in a literary language, largely Epic with some Doric flavouring, and with a few Aeolisms that he borrowed from the love poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus. It is possible however that the Doric dialect was added by editors in Hellenistic and Roman times, when the poet's home town, Rhegium, had become more Doric than it had been in the poet's own time. In addition to this "superficial element of Doric dialect", the style of Ibycus features mainly dactylic rhythms (reflecting the Epic traditions he shared with Stesichorus), a love theme and accumulated epithets. His use of imagery can seem chaotic but it is justified as an artistic effect. His style has been described by one modern scholar as "graceful and passionate." The ancients sometimes considered his work with distaste as a lecherous and corrupting influence but they also responded sympathetically to the pathos he sought to evoke—his account of Menelaus's failure to kill Helen of Troy, under the spell of her beauty, was valued by ancient critics above Euripides's account of the same story in his play Andromache.