st ode,
celebrating a victory of the Cean Argeios at the Isthmus, may possibly have
been placed there for a biographical reason, viz., because the poet treated
in it the early legends of his native island.

A mythical narrative, connected in some way with the victor or his city,
usually occupies the central part of the Pindaric ode. It serves to lift
the poem into an ideal region, and to invest it with more than a local or
temporary significance. The method of Bacchylides in this department of the
epinikion is best illustrated by the myth of Croesus in Ode iii., that of
Heracles and Meleager in Ode v., and that of the Proetides in Ode x.
Pindar's habit is to select certain moments or scenes of a legend, which he
depicts with great force and vividness. Bacchylides, on the other hand, has
a gentle flow of simple epic narrative; he relies on the interest of the
story as a whole, rather than on his power of presenting situations.
Another element, always present in the longer odes of victory, is that
which may be called the "gnomic." Here, again, there is a contrast between
the two poets. Pindar packs his [Greek: gnomai], his maxims or moral
sentiments, into terse and sometimes obscure epigrams; he utters them in a
didactic tone, as of one who can speak with the commanding voice of Delphic
wisdom. The moralizing of Bacchylides is rather an utterance of quiet
meditation, sometimes recalling the strain of Ionian gnomic elegy.

The epinikia of Bacchylides are followed in the MS. by six compositions
which the Alexandrians classed under the general name of [Greek:
dithuramboi], and which we, too, must be content to describe collectively
as _Dithyrambs_. The derivation of [Greek: di-thurambos] is uncertain:
[Greek: di] may be the root seen in [Greek: dios] (cp. [Greek: dipolia],
and [Greek: thurambos] another form of [Greek: thriambos], a word by which
Cratinus (c. 448 B.C.) denotes some kind of hymn to the wine-god. The
"dithyramb," first mentioned by Archilochus (c. 670 B.C.), received a
finished and choral form from Arion of Lesbos (c. 600 B.C.). His
dithyrambs, produced at Corinth, belonged to the cult of Dionysus, and the
members of his chorus ([Greek: tragikos choros]) personated satyrs.
Originally concerned with the birth of the god, the dithyramb came to deal
with all his fortunes: then its scope became still larger; it might
celebrate, not Dionysus alone, but any god or hero. This last development
had taken place before t