Dithyrambs were sung by choirs at
Delos, but the literary fragments that have survived are largely
Athenian. In Athens, dithyrambs were sung by a
Greek chorus of up to fifty men or boys dancing in circular formation, who may or may not have been dressed as
Satyrs, probably accompanied by the
aulos. They would normally relate some incident in the life of
Dionysus or just celebrate wine and fertility. The ancient Greeks laid out the criteria of the dithyramb as follows: • special rhythm •
aulos accompaniment in
Phrygian mode • enriching text • considerable narrative content • originally
antistrophic character Competitions between groups, singing and dancing dithyrambs were an important part of the festivals of Dionysus, such as the
Dionysia and
Lenaia. Each tribe would enter two choirs, one of men and one of boys, each under the leadership of a
coryphaeus. The names of the winning teams of dithyrambic contests in Athens were recorded. The successful
choregos would receive a statue that would be erected—at his expense—as a public monument to commemorate the victory. However, most of the poets remain unknown. The earliest mention of dithyramb, found by
Sir Arthur Wallace Pickard-Cambridge, is in a fragment of
Archilochus, who flourished in the first half of the seventh century BCE: "I know how to lead the fair song of the Lord Dionysus, the dithyramb, when my wits are fused with wine." As a literary composition for chorus, their inspiration is unknown, although it was likely Greek, as
Herodotus explicitly speaks of
Arion of
Lesbos as "the first of men we know to have composed the dithyramb and named it and produced it in
Corinth." The word
dithyramb has no known origin, but is frequently assumed not to be derived from Greek. An old hypothesis is that the word is borrowed from
Phrygian or
Pelasgian, and literally means "Vierschritt", i. e., "four-step", compare
iamb and
thriambus, but
H. S. Versnel rejects this etymology and suggests instead a derivation from a cultic exclamation. Dithyrambs were composed by the poets
Simonides and
Bacchylides, as well as
Pindar (the only one whose works have survived in anything like their original form). Later examples were dedicated to other gods, but the dithyramb subsequently was developed (traditionally by
Arion) into a literary form. According to
Aristotle,
Athenian tragedy developed from the dithyramb; the two forms developed alongside one another for some time. The clearest sense of dithyramb as proto-tragedy comes from a surviving dithyramb by Bacchylides, though it was composed after tragedy had already developed fully. Bacchylides' dithyramb is a dialogue between a solitary singer and a choir. It is suggestive of what tragedy may have resembled before
Aeschylus added a second actor instead of the choir. In the later 5th century BCE, the dithyramb "became a favorite vehicle for the musical experiments of the poets of the 'new music'." This movement included the poets
Timotheus of Miletus,
Cinesias,
Melanippides, and
Philoxenus of Cythera. By the 4th century BCE the
genre was in decline, although the dithyrambic competitions did not come to an end until well after the
Roman takeover of Greece. ==Modern dithyrambs==