If we keep clearly in mind the object rather than the exact date of the Spring Song we shall avoid many difficulties.  A Dithyramb was sung at Delphi through the winter months, which at first seems odd.  But we must remember that among agricultural peoples the performance of magical ceremonies to promote fertility and the food supply may begin at any moment after the earth is ploughed and the seed sown.  The sowing of the seed is its death and burial; “that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.”  When the death and burial are once accomplished the hope of resurrection and new birth begins, and with the hope the magical ceremonies that may help to fulfil that hope.  The Sun is new-born in midwinter, at the solstice, and our “New” year follows, yet it is in the spring that, to this day, we keep our great resurrection festival.

* * * * *

We return to our argument, holding steadily in our minds this connection.  The Dithyramb is a Spring Song at a Spring Festival, and the importance of the Spring Festival is that it magically promotes the food-supply.

* * * * *

Do we know any more about the Dithyramb?  Happily yes, and the next point is as curious as significant.

Pindar, in one of his Odes, asks a strange question: 

    “Whence did appear the Graces of Dionysos,
    With the Bull-driving Dithyramb?”

Scholars have broken their own heads and one another’s to find a meaning and an answer to the odd query.  It is only quite lately that they have come at all to see that the Dithyramb was a Spring Song, a primitive rite.  Formerly it was considered to be a rather elaborate form of lyric poetry invented comparatively late.  But, even allowing it is the Spring Song, are we much further?  Why should the Dithyramb be bull-driving?  How can driving a Bull help the spring to come?  And, above all, what are the “slender-ankled” Graces doing, helping to drive the great unwieldy Bull?

The difficulty about the Graces, or Charites, as the Greeks called them, is soon settled.  They are the Seasons, or “Hours,” and the chief Season, or Hour, was Spring herself.  They are called Charites, or Graces, because they are, in the words of the Collect, the “Givers of all grace,” that is, of all increase physical and spiritual.  But why do they want to come driving in a Bull?  It is easy to see why the Givers of all grace lead the Dithyramb, the Spring Song; their coming, with their “fruits in due season” is the very gist of the Dithyramb; but why is the Dithyramb “bull-driving”?  Is this a mere “poetical” epithet?  If it is, it is not particularly poetical.