There is an unfortunate facility in such attempts. Tragedy embraced many diverse elements in its material and technique. Accordingly, whatever anyone sets out to find, he can be almost certain of discovering there. Thus, Dieterich with his theory of the development of tragedy from funeral dirges, the Eleusinian mysteries, and various aetiological sources; Ridgeway with his tomb theory; Miss Harrison with her “Year Spirit” (the Eniautos-Daimon) and sympathetic magic; and Murray with his attempt to reconcile and expand the Dieterich-Harrison theories, all find confirmation for their views in the same body of dramatic literature. The very facility of such analyzing is its undoing. Moreover, despite numerous attempts to the contrary, the real nature of the primitive dithyramb can scarcely be a matter of doubt. Plato, who was also no “simpleton,” defined it as a song in celebration of the birth of Dionysus.[19] Now since the dithyramb is known to have been opened up to a wider range of themes considerably before Plato’s time, his definition must apply to the original meaning of the term. This interpretation does not remain unsupported. Thus, the first extant instance of the words occurs in a fragment of Archilochus (_ca._ 680-640 B.C.), who declares that he “knows how, when his heart is crazed with wine, to lead lord Dionysus’ dithyramb.”[20] It should be observed that Archilochus does not say that he knows how to write a dithyramb, but how to take part in one as a drunken ἐξάρχων (“leader”). Such a performance was doubtless, as Aristotle said, largely improvisational, being perhaps coupled with the rendition of some ritual chant (καλὸν μέλος). Dionysus is characterized as θριαμβο-διθύραμβος (“celebrated in dithyrambs”) by Pratinas,[21] and addressed as διθύραμβος by Euripides in his _Bacchanals_, vs. 526. In an ode in honor of the victories which were won by Xenophon of Corinth in 464 B.C. Pindar inquires, “Whence appeared the charms of Dionysus in connection with the ox-driving dithyramb?”[22] Here, also, the author is not referring to the Corinthian dithyramb of his own day but to the period when it was put upon a quasi-literary level by Arion (see below). Finally, Epicharmus went so far as to declare that “when you drink water, it isn’t a dithyramb,”[23] showing that the more primitive meaning of the term was not crowded out by later developments. These passages are sufficient to show that the dithyramb was at all times intimately associated with Dionysus and at the beginning belonged to him exclusively; their force is not invalidated by the acknowledged fact that at an early period (see p. 11, below) the restriction was broken down.