ABSTRACT
Open any history or hand-book of Greek literature in general, or Greek lyric in particular, and one will very soon come across several references to monody and choral lyric as important divisions within the broader field of melic poetry. The earliest exponents of the monody/choral dichotomy coupled it with a geographical distinction. Growing knowledge of other specimens of Greek lyric necessitated some new modifications in K. O. Muller's picture of the relationship between monody and choral lyric. And though two poets, Stesichorus and Ibycus, were customarily supposed to have restricted themselves, with less versatility, to one subdivision of lyric, that subdivision, on all the evidence, is now revealed as monody not chorus. Most would continue to accept the validity and importance of the division, which a scholar has recently termed 'the most fundamental generic distinction within ancient lyric poetry’.
