Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/47

25 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 2.1 has been already observed, that so far as these songs really originated in the ancient mythical period, they were intended to be sung, not by a dancing chorus, but by an individual to the choral dance. Lastly, Chry- sothemis, a Cretan, who is said to have sung the first chorus to the Pythian Apollo, clothed in the solemn dress of ceremony, which the citharodi in later times wore at the Pythian games. ii. Singers in connexion with the cognate worships of Demeter and Dionysus. Among these were the Eumolpids in Eleusis of Attica — a race which, from early times, took part in the worship of Demeter, and in the historical age exercised the chief sacerdotal function connected with it, the office of Hierophant. These Eumolpids evidently derived their name of "beautiful singers" from their character (from ev fi£X- 7T£(Tdai), and their original employment was the singing of sacred hymns ; it will be afterwards shown that this function agrees well with the fact, that their progenitor, the original Eumolpus, is called a Thracian. Also another Attic house, the Lycomids (which likewise had in later times a part in the Eleusinian worship of Demeter), were in the habit of singing hymns, and, moreover, hymns ascribed to Orpheus, Musaeus, and Pamphus. Of the songs which were attributed to Pamphus we may form a general idea, by remembering that he is said to have first sung the strain of lamentation at the tomb of Linus. The name of Musaeus (which in fact only signified a singer inspired by the Muses) is in Attica generally connected with songs for the initiations of Demeter. Among the numerous works ascribed to him, a hymn to Demeter is alone considered by Pausanias as genuine*; but however obscure may be the circumstances belonging to this name, thus much at least is clear, that music and poetry were combined at an early period with this worship. Musaeus is in tradition commonly called a Thracian ; he is also reckoned as one of the race of Eumolpids, and stated to be the disciple of Orpheus. The Thracian singer, Orpheus, is unquestion- ably the darkest point in the entire history of the early Grecian poetry, on account of the scantiness of the accounts respecting him, which have been preserved in the more ancient writers — the lyric poets, Ibycus f and Pindar J, the historians Hellanicus § and Pherecydes ||, and the Athenian tragedians, containing the first express testimonies of his name. This deficiency is ill supplied by the multitude of marvellous stories concerning him, which occur in later writers, and by the poems and poetical fragments which are extant under the name of Orpheus. t Ibycus in Priscian, vi. 18, 92, torn. i.-p. 283, ed. Krehl. (Fragm. 22, ed. Schnei- dewin), who calls him ovopuxXvros 'O^ns. Ibycus flourished 560 — 40, b. c. I Pyth. iv. 315. § Hellanicus in Proclus on Hesiod's Works and Days, 631 (Fragm. 75, ed.Sturz), and in Proclus sr^i 'Oftfyou in Gaisford's Hephaestion, p. 466 (Fragm. 145, ed. Sturz). II Pherecydes in Schol. Apollon. i. 23 (Fragm. 18, ed. Sturz).
 * 1.22,7. Compare iv. 1, 5.