It is glorified for popularity, and is a subject ofdithyrambic rhetoric.
Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators and are never deceived by dithyrambic oratory.
Patriotic" history and dithyrambicliterature never can do it.
Why then should we not join in dithyrambic oratory, and set all our mores to optimism?
Ion, having carried off the prize in a dithyrambic contest, distributed to every Athenian citizen a cup of Chian wine.
Pindar, in whose hands the ode took such magnificent completeness, is said to have been trained in the elements of dithyrambic poetry by a certain Lasus of Hermione.
In the opinion of antiquity, pure dithyrambic poetry reached its climax in a lost poem.
The earliest dithyrambic poetry was probably improvised by priests of Bacchus at solemn feasts, and expressed, in disordered numbers, the excitement and frenzy felt by the worshippers.
As Arion had devoted his genius to the cultivation of the tragic or cyclic chorus, Lasos, the master of Pindar, stamped his own style upon the dithyrambic ode as it continued to be used at festive meetings.
The dithyrambic element was lost; the choric odes providing a relief from violent excitement, instead of embodying the very soul and spirit of the poet's teaching.
Tragedy had scarcely passed beyond the dithyrambic stage when he received it from the hands of Phrynichus.
No fragments of the tragedies of Empedocles survive; they probably belonged to the class of semi-dithyrambic compositions which prevailed at Athens before the days of AEschylus, and which continued to be cultivated in Sicily.
When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes.
Relying upon this noble illusion, she can now move her limbs for the dithyrambic dance, and abandon herself unhesitatingly to an orgiastic feeling of freedom, in which she could not venture to indulge as music itself, without this illusion.
How great Dionysus must be among you, when the Delian god deems such charms necessary to cure you of your dithyrambic madness!
But I now, by reason of my needy condition, do not speakdithyrambic poems, as Socrates says, but even epic poems too.
Pindar shows the same feeling when he writes:— Ere then crept in the long-drawn dithyrambic song, And san that rang false on the speaker’s tongue.
Now at last the genius ofdithyrambic drama doffs its last disguise.
But it is just this contradiction which is the miraculous fact in the soul of the dithyrambic dramatist, and if his nature can be understood at all, surely it must be here.
And of harp-playing and dithyrambic poetry in general, what would you say?
Under his touch Correggio loses somewhat of his sensuous audacity, his dithyrambic ecstasy, and approaches the ordinary standard of prettiness and graceful beauty.
Thus the original element of Greek tragedy was the dithyramb, as cultivated by Arion; and the first step in the progress of the dithyrambic Chorus towards the Drama was the introduction of heroic legends into the odes.
The old lyrical poetry, never much cultivated in Athens, ceased in a great measure when tragedy arose, or rather tragedy was the complete development, the new and perfected consummation of the Dithyrambic ode.
The tribes of Athens, or rather the rich citizens belonging to them, were wont on feast-days to give representations of dithyrambic choruses as well as of tragedies and comedies.
Of the dithyrambic poet Cinesias it is said that he profaned holy things in an obscene manner.
A tragic and dithyrambic poet, who had written many pieces, which had met with great success at Athens.
