Alkaios (625-575 B. C.), son of a noble family of Mitylene, composed no less than ten books of sacred hymns and drinking, love, and war songs, in which the predominating note is the hate of tyranny and the joys of the banquet. His contemporary, Sappho, whose verses are likewise full of passion and pathos, takes flaming love as her theme, and a number of other Greek women poets of the sixth century follow her example. 'The poems of Alkaios and Sappho are the most melodious of Greek creations.... Their fluent strophes, so easily subjected to musical treatment, have not only in antiquity but throughout a series of centuries been regarded as a fixed form’ (cf. the Odes of Horace). Ibykos and Anakreon, both living in the second half of the sixth century, belong to the same category. Both were wandering singers. The former is known to us through Schiller’s poem perpetuating the legend of the cranes; the latter is still a byword for the joy of life and the praise of love, wine, and song. A group of auletic musicians living in the seventh century, to which belonged Xenokritos, Polymnestos, and Thaletas, is credited with new developments in the musical practice of Sparta, which were soon transferred to the other Hellenic states as well. This great and far-reaching innovation was the introduction of the choral dances. The cradle of the dance was said to be the island of Crete. Thence came Thaletas, the most important of the group of composers just mentioned. His fame reached the Spartans, who summoned him to organize a _Pæan_ in honor of Apollo, in order to allay the pest,[40] and this inaugurated his extended activity in Sparta, where he introduced also the _pyrrhic_ ([Greek: pyrrhíchê]), a rapidly moving dance, and the _gymnopædia_ ([Greek: gymnopaidia]) festival dances performed annually in honor of those who fell at Thyrea. In the regular order of gymnastic dance education the last named were first, then came the _pyrrhics_, and finally the 'stage dances,’ including the famous _hyporchemas_--pantomimic dances--which doubtless were a development in the direction of the drama.