One of the most ancient species of composition (in which Chrysothemis the Cretan and Philammon were said to have contended at Delphi) was a hymn to Apollo;(1448) which we must suppose to have been composed in the ancient Doric dialect, and sung simply to the cithara. In reference to its musical execution, this hymn was also called a _nome_,(1449) the invention of which was ascribed to Apollo himself.(1450) At Delos also there were nomes, which were sung at the cyclic choral dances, and were attributed to Olen, another representative of the ancient poetry of hymns.(1451) The general character of these was composure and regularity;(1452) the measure was anciently (as we know from certain testimony) only hexameter:(1453) which agrees well with the fact that the origin of the hexameter was derived from Pytho.(1454) In the account that Philammon, the ancient composer of hymns, had placed choruses of young women round the altar, who sang the birth of Latona and her children in lyric measures (ἐν μέλεσι),(1455) the nomes of Philammon,(1456) as improved by Terpander the ancient lyric poet, appear to be confounded with the original ones; since these, after the fashion of the most ancient composers, contained only hexameters.(1457) The ancient religious poets mentioned in these accounts, Chrysothemis, Philammon, and Olen, may be looked on as Dorians with the same certainty as the founders of the temples of Tarrha, Delphi, and Patara, to which they particularly belonged.(1458) The language also of the poems ascribed to them must have been Doric; though indeed the fact of a poetical use of this dialect before the historic times will not agree with the predominant, though perhaps not well-grounded notions respecting the progress of poetry in Greece. 14. That the _pæan_ was a song of thanksgiving for deliverance has been mentioned above. With respect, however, to the manner in which it was performed, we learn from Homer that it was sung after the sacrificial feast,(1459) when the goblets were carried round after the sacred libation; and this was also the case at Sparta and Athens.(1460) It was generally sung in a sitting posture, although in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo that god is represented as accompanying the Cretans who sing in a measured step.(1461) At Sparta it was danced in choruses.(1462) On the whole it required a regular and sedate measure,(1463) even when it assumed a more lively air, as for the nome, and the solemn σπονδειακὸν, sung at libations.(1464)