 The lyric or melic poet was distinguished from the writer of plays (although Athenian drama included choral odes, in lyric form), the writer of trochaic and iambic verses (which were recited), the writer of elegies (accompanied by the flute, rather than the lyre) and the writer of epic.The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria created a canon of nine lyric poets deemed especially worthy of critical study.These archaic and classical musician-poets included Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon and Pindar.