Page:The Tragic Drama of the Greeks (1896).djvu/31

Dorians the art of choral composition, with its elaborate mixture of singing and dancing, had been practised from time immemorial with peculiar zeal; but was first brought to perfection during the middle of the seventh century by the genius of poets such as Alcman and Stesichorus, whose nomes, paeans, hymns, and other similar productions soon became famous over the whole of Greece. The dithyramb naturally shared in the general development of choral poetry. and the author to whom it owed its advancement was Arion^[1].

Arion, whose fame has been immortalised by Herodotus, was the most celebrated harp-player of his time^[2]. Though a native of Lesbos, he lived the greater part of his life at the court of Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, and must therefore have flourished at the end of the seventh century, and the beginning of the sixth^[3]. It was at Corinth that he first brought the dithyramb into general prominence by the improvements which he introduced^[4]. The exact nature of his services has been somewhat obscured, owing to the Greek habit of ascribing the discovery of an art to its first distinguished exponent. Thus Arion was said by many writers to have 'invented' the dithyramb—an obvious exaggeration^[5]. He was also said to have been the first to devise the circular arrangement of the chorus, and this fact was playfully expressed in mythological language by calling him the 'son of Cycleus^[6].' But the position of the chorus in a ring round the altar is a natural practice in itself, and had probably been adopted long before his time. What Arion appears to have done was not so much to create new