Originally, it was accompanied by a lyre, a string instrument like a small U-shaped harp commonly used during Greek classical antiquity and later periods.
During public religious festivals and important family functions, performances of archaic choral lyric poetry were often presented by choruses of both men and women.
His choral poetry was known only through quotations by other Greek authors until 1855, when a discovery of a papyrus was found in a tomb at the Saqqara ancient burial ground in Egypt.
This papyrus, now displayed at the Louvre in Paris, held the fragment with approximately 100 verses of his Partheneion (a poem sung by a chorus of adolescent girls).
All of the chorus performers (originally consisting of fifty members, then reduced to twelve and fifteen) were masked, looked exactly the same, and spoke at the same time, which created a sense of unity.