i8 EARLY HISTORY OF GREEK TRAGEDY. [ch. forms, as to introduce order, system, and regularity into those which already existed. Thus it was he, most likely, who fixed the number of dancers at fifty— a number which was never afterwards changed ^ He may also have been the author of the antistrophic arrangement of the versed This arrangement, which was common to all the lyrical compositions of the Dorians, as systematlsed by the poets of the seventh century, was intended to guide and regulate the alternate movements of the dancers. But it is hardly likely to have been employed in the earliest form of the dithyramb, since it implies a greater precision in the evolutions of the dance than seems consistent with the character of the old folk-songs. Arion is sometimes said to have revolutionised the musical character of the dithyramb, and to have converted it into a more dignified species of composition, by substituting the grave Doric mode for the emotional music of the Phrygian style, and by employing the harp as well as the fluted But the evidence for these assertions is far from reliable*. And the fact that in later times the dithyramb was always set to Phrygian music, and to the accompaniment of the flute, renders it improbable that Arion should have effected any such inno-
- Simonides, epigr. 147 -ntvifiKovT Aojpievs. In any case the testimony
dvBpuv KaXa fiadovri x^PV- Schol. only applies to the fifth century B. c. Aesch. Timarch. § II 77€i/TJ7Koi'Ta7rat5a;i' The fragment of Pratinas (Bergk, Xopbv fj dvSpuiv. Pollux 4. 110. Tzetzes p. 1219 , where he speaks of rdv tfidv ad Lycoph. p. i. Awpiov x"/'*"') is from a hyporchenu, ' Aristot. Probl. 19. 15 liu Kal oi not a dithyramb. It is true that the SiBvpafi^oi, (iTfidr} ^iijjitjtikoI eyh'ovro, latest dithyrambic poets mixed the ovKeri exovaiv avTiarp6<povs- irpoTfpov dk Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian modes in ftx'^"- Dion. Hal. Comp. Verb. 19 the same dithyramb; but the practice (TTil -napa ye Tofs dpxaiois Tfraynivos ^v was regarded as an unjustifiable licence. 6 5i9vpafji0o^. The introduction of the harp along ^ Sittl, Griech. Titeratur. 3, p. 113. with the flute is inferred from the fact K.O. Midler, Greek Literature, p. 204. that Arion is said to have been the
- The only evidence for the employ- greatest harp-player of his time. But
ment of the Doric mode is Simonides' there is nothing to show that he used epigram on the dithyrambic victory of the harp in his dithyrambs. Thehymn.s the tribe Acamanthis (epigr. 148 tv b' and proems which he is known to have (Ti9r]vetT0 yvK(pdv una AajploisApl(7Tajv composed ^Proclus, Chrest. c. 14; Suidas 1 'fipfiios jjSii vvivfjia xe'a'*' taOapoU iv v. 'Apicovj would naturally be set to the avoTs. Here however Bergk conj. harp.
