We have only fragments of these cult choral songs (see OCD(4) 469). Arion [Author, Myth] (alpha 3886) was its alleged founder as a literary genre. Many believe that it was the ancestor of Athenian tragedy, also performed at festivals of Dionysus (see Bibliography). Our largest fragments are by the well-known poets Bacchylides (beta 59: see web address 1, and click on the right arrow to continue through the surviving fragments) and Pindar (pi 1617); but see also Sutton's collection.
[1] Likewise in Timaeus' Platonic Lexicon and in Glosses on Herodotus 1.23; similarly in the scholia to Plato, Republic 394C.
[2] Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 1.17; quoted at greater length at kappa 912.
For a list of the poets of the "new dithyramb" and the attacks of the comic playwrights on their empty, bombastic style and daring music see delta 1029, kappa 2647, and Bibliography.