Respecting Thalêtas, and the gradual alterations in the character of music at Sparta. Hoeckh has given much instructive matter (Kreta. vol. iii, pp. 340-377). Respecting Nymphæus of Kydonia, whom Ælian (V. II. xii, 50) puts in juxtaposition with Thalêtas and Terpander, nothing is known. After what is called the second fashion of music (κατάστασις) had thus been introduced by Thalêtas and his contemporaries.—the first fashion being that of Terpander,—no farther innovations were allowed. The ephors employed violent means to prohibit the intended innovations of Phrynis and Timotheus, after the Persian war: see Plutarch Agis, c. 10. [165] Alkman. Fragm. 13-17. ed. Bergk, ὁ πάμφαγος Ἀλκμάν: compare Fr. 63. Aristides calls him ὁ τῶν παρθένων ἐπαινέτης καὶ σύμβουλος (Or. xlv, vol. ii, p. 40. Dindorf). Of the Partneneia of Alkman (songs, hymns, and dances, composed for a chorus of maidens) there were at least two books (Stephanus Byzant. v. Ἐρυσίχη). He was the earliest poet who acquired renown in this species of composition, afterwards much pursued by Pindar, Bacchylidês, and Simonidês of Keôs: see Welcker, Alkman. Fragment. p. 10. [166] Alkman, Frag. 64, ed. Bergk. Ὥρας δ᾽ ἐσῆκε τρεῖς, θέρος Καὶ χεῖμα κ᾽ ὠπώραν τρίταν· Καὶ τέτρατον τὸ ἦρ, ὅκα Σάλλει μὲν, ἐσθίειν δ᾽ ἄδαν Οὐκ ἐστί. Judging from these and from a few other fragments of this poet, Alkman appears to have combined the life and exciting vigor of Archilochus in the song properly so called, sung by himself individually,—with a larger knowledge of musical and rhythmical effect in regard to the choric performance. He composed in the Laconian dialect,—a variety of the Doric with some intermixture of Æolisms. And it was from him, jointly with those other composers who figured at Sparta during the century after Terpander, as well as from the simultaneous development of the choric muse[167] in Argos, Sikyôn, Arcadia, and other parts of Peloponnesus, that the Doric dialect acquired permanent footing in Greece, as the only proper dialect for choric compositions. Continued by Stesichorus and Pindar, this habit passed even to the Attic dramatists, whose choric songs are thus in a great measure Doric, while their dialogue is Attic. At Sparta, as well as in other parts of Peloponnesus,[168] the musical and rhythmical style appears to have been fixed by Alkman and his contemporaries, and to have been tenaciously maintained, for two or three centuries, with little or no innovation; the more so, as the flute-players at Sparta formed an hereditary profession, who followed the routine of their fathers.[169] [167] Plutarch, De Musicâ, c. 9, p. 1134. About the dialect of Alkman, see Ahrens, De Dialecto Æolicâ, sects. 2, 4; about his different metres, Welcker, Alkman. Fragm. pp. 10-12.