Author(s):
Robbins, Emmet (Toronto)
[German version] (Ἀρίων;
Aríōn). Lyric poet from Methymna on Lesbos. According to statements in the Suda, his
akme was in Olympiad 38 (628-624 BC), and it is said there that he had been a pupil of Alcman. Hdt. 1,23 reports that he had been the first person to compose a dithyramb, and given it a name and performed it in Corinth. The mention in the Suda awards him the merit of being ‘the first to have put together a chorus, sung a dithyramb and to have given a name to that which the chorus sang, and to be the first to institute a recitation of a satyr verse’. Other sources also name him as the founder of the dithyramb (Schol. Pind. Ol. 13,25; Schol. Aristoph. Av. 1403, where Hellanicus and Dicaearchus are introduced as sources and A. is called a κυκλιοδιδάσκαλον). He was significant for the development of this genre. Because Archilochus said he led the dithyrambus (1,120 IEG), this cannot have originated with A. But A. was presumably the person who turned it into a definite poetic form. The additional observation in the Suda as compared to Herodotus suggests that A. played a role in the development of tragedy, which is confirmed by Iohannes Diaconus: according to him, Solon had stated in his Elegies, that A. was the first to create performances of dramas (2,30a IEG). It is unclear, whether the listing of the merits of A. in the Suda refers to a single matter or to various achievements. If these are the descriptions of a single achievement [1. 38-40; 2], then A. would have had his cyclical choruses (from this comes the description by the Suda of Κυκλέως υἱός) sing poems that he had composed, whose themes and titles derive from him, for which, however, he at the same time used the old design…