Didactic reading

The Greeks themselves did not include elegies nor iambus within melic poetry, since they had different metres and different musical instruments.

Modern surveys of "Greek lyric" often include relatively short poems composed for similar purposes or circumstances that were not strictly "song lyrics" in the modern sense, such as elegies and iambics.[6]

Much of Greek lyric is occasional poetry, composed for public or private performance by a soloist or chorus to mark particular occasions.