[168] Plutarch, De Musicâ, c. 32, p. 1142, c. 37, p. 1144; Athenæus, xiv, p. 632. In Krête, also, the popularity of the primitive musical composers was maintained, though along with the innovator Timotheus: see Inscription No. 3053, ap. Boeckh, Corp. Ins. [169] Herodot. vi, 60. They were probably a γένος with an heroic progenitor, like the heralds, to whom the historian compares them. Alkman was the last poet who addressed himself to the popular chorus. Both 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,[170] 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.[171] Its exciting character approached to the worship of the Great Mother in Asia, and stood in contrast with the solemn and stately pæan addressed to Apollo. Arion introduced 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 Herodotus.[172] He did not, however, remain permanently there, but travelled 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 dispersed Greeks. Such transfer of the dithyramb, from the field of spontaneous nature into the garden of art,[173] constitutes the first stage in the refinement of Dionysiac worship; which will hereafter be found still farther exalted in the form of the Attic drama. [170] Pindar, Fragm. 44, ed. Bergk: Schol. ad Pindar. Olymp. xiii, 25; Proclus, Chrestomathia, c. 12-14. ad calc. Hephæst. Gaisf. p. 382: compare W. M. Schmidt, In Dithyrambum Poetarumque Dithyrambicorum Reliquias, pp. 171-183 (Berlin, 1845). [171] Archiloch. Fragm. 72, ed. Bergk. Ὡς Διωνύσου ἄνακτος καλὸν ἐξάρξαι μέλος Οἶδα διθύραμβον, οἴνῳ ξυγκεραυνωθεὶς φρένας. The old oracle quoted in Demosthen. cont. Meidiam, about the Dionysia at Athens, enjoins—Διονύσῳ δημοτελῆ ἱερὰ τελεῖν, ~καὶ κρατῆρα κεράσαι~, καὶ χοροὺς ἱστάναι.