specimen of which, by a fortunate blunder of a grammarian, has been preserved to us among Pindar's Epinicia, and now figures in his extant works as the Eleventh Nemean Ode. Lastly, we must add the Threni, or dirges, of which no complete specimen remains. Amid all the ravages made by Time on the grand fabric of Greek poetry, there is none, perhaps, more to be regretted than that which has destroyed for ever works embodying probably the deepest thoughts and loftiest aspirations of the Greek race on the subject of death and the life beyond it.
Of the third class, the most important seem to have been the Scolia, or cross-songs. To perform these the Chorus was divided, and the successive verses assigned to its different sections, so that the song appeared to travel backwards and forwards in a crooked track across the room. Such Choric Scolia were probably confined to the banquet-halls of princes. The ordinary Scolium, of which we hear so often in accounts of private entertainments, employed no Chorus at all. It was a mere solo performance, begun by one of the guests to the accompaniment of a harp, which he played himself; presently he handed the harp across the table to another feaster, who continued the performance, and so on. The Choric Scolium, on the contrary, required all the regular apparatus of a Choral Ode, the singers, the orchestra of flutes and harps, and the ballet.
The chief sources which supplied the themes of Choric poetry in its highest developments—the Hymn, the Pæan, and the Encomium—have already been in-
