Greek lyric emerged in the early 7th century BC within the political and social milieu of the Greek polis. This body of poetry was written in dialects of Ancient Greek and served as a product of that specific city-state environment.
Lyric could be sung to the accompaniment of either a string instrument like the lyre or kithara or a wind instrument such as the reed pipe called the aulos. Whether the accompaniment was a string or wind instrument, the term for such accompanied lyric was melic poetry from the Greek word for song.
In the 3rd century BC the encyclopedic movement at Alexandria anthologized a canon of nine melic poets. This group included Alcaeus Alcman Anacreon Bacchylides Ibycus Pindar Sappho Simonides and Stesichorus.
The poems of Sappho are said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the Library of Alexandria. The first book alone contained more than 1,300 lines of verse.
Archilochus stands as the earliest known Greek lyric poet who mastered the art of poetic attack aimed at insulting or shaming a personal enemy. In this last mood love poetry might blur into invective an art at which Archilochus excelled.