Note 236 — Chapter V

The Dithyramb was an ancient Bacchanalian performance, as early at least as Archilochus, who says "he knows how to lead off the dithyramb, the beautiful song of Dionysus, when his mind is inflamed with wine" (Frag. ap. Athen. XIV. p. 628). It seems to have been a hymn sung by one or more members of a κῶμος, or irregular band of revellers, to the music of the flute. Arion, at Corinth, first gave a regular choral or antistrophic form to the dithyramb (Herodot. I. 24; Pindar, Olymp. XIII. 18-25). The choruses, which ordinarily consisted of fifty men or youths, danced in a ring round the altar of Dionysus. Hence they were termed cyclic choruses (κίκλιοι χοροί), and dithyrambic poets were understood by the term κυκλιοδιδάσκαλοι.