Why was choral lyric poetry commonly written in the Doric dialect?
Choral lyric poetry was commonly written in the Doric dialect primarily because of its strong historical and cultural association with the Dorian regions of the Greek mainland, as well as Dorian settlements in Sicily and southern Italy.1
Because choral lyric originated and flourished in these areas, the use of the Doric dialect became a conventional standard for the genre. However, it is important to note that the language used in these poems was not a pure vernacular. Instead, it was an artificial literary dialect based on Doric but frequently interspersed with elements from Ionic epic and Lesbian poetry. This practice of blending dialects was common in "noble" literary genres, similar to how the Homeric epics utilized an artificial mixture of dialects to establish a standard for dactylic poetry across the Greek world.123