Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/106

 88 HISTORY OF GREECE. Alkman was the last poet who addressed himself to the popu* lar chorus. Boih Arion and Stesichorus composed for a body of trained men, with a degree of variety and involution such as could not be attained by a mere fraction of the people. The primitive dithyrambus was a round choric dance and song in honor of Dionysus, 1 common to Naxos, Thebes, and seemingly to many other places, at the Dionysiac festival, a spontaneous effusion of drunken men in the hour of revelry, wherein the poet Archilochus, " with the thunder of wine full upon his mind," had often taken the chief part.- Its exciting character approached to the worship of the Great Mother in Asia, and stood in contrast with the solemn and stately paian addressed to Apollo. Arion intro- duced into it an alteration such as Archilochus had himself brought about in the scurrilous iambus. He converted it into an elaborate composition in honor of the god, sung and danced by a chorus of fifty persons, not only sober, but trained with great strictness ; though its rhythm and movements, and its equipment in the character of satyrs, presented more or less an imitation of the primitive license. Born at Methymna in Lesbos, Arion appears as a harper, singer, and composer, much favored by Periander at Corinth, in which city he first " composed, denominated, and taught the dithyramb," earlier than any one known to Herodo- tus. 3 He did not, however, remain permanently there, but trav- elled from city to city, exhibiting at the festivals for money, especially to Sicilian and Italian Greece, where he acquired large gains. We may here again remark how the poets as well as the festivals served to promote a sentiment of unity among the dis- persed Greeks. Such transfer of the dithyramb, from the field 1 Pindar, Fragm. 44, ccl. Bcrgk : Scliol. ad Pindar. Olymp. xiii, 25 ; Pro- clus, Chrestomathia, c. 12-14, ad calc. Hephajst. Gaisf. p. 382: compare W. M. Schmidt, In Dithyrambum Poctarumque Dithyrambicoram Re- liquias, pp. 171-183 (Berlin, 1845). 'Of &iuvijov uvaKTof Ka/.bv i^up^ai fi&of Olda difivpa/tfov, olvu ZvyKepavvu&slf pevae. The old oracle quoted in Dcmosthen. cont. Meidiam, about the Dionjgli fct Athens, enjoins Aiovvav dijftoTs^ hpu re^elv, <al Kpart/ca rat, Kdl %opovf laruvai. 1 Hcrodot. i, 23 ; Suidas, v, 'Apftr; Pindar, Olymf. xiii, 25.
 * Archiloch. Fragm. 72, cd. Bergk.