place entirely
different. This mystical drama, leaving so much to the imagination,
and supplementing its actual representation by the help of chorus and
a sort of sanctity derived from music, lasted but a few years. Other
causes were at work destined to bring it to a close.

Almost immediately after Euripides, appeared the great comedy writer,
Aristophanes, about 420 B.C. This great artist was not simply a
dramatist, but also a patriot and a philosopher. In several of his
plays he satirizes the classical dramas effectively, parodies their
effects, and in general pokes fun at them. He was, however, a well
accomplished musician, who might, if he had chosen, have gone on in
the steps of his predecessors. But the times were not favorable to
this. Previous to the time of Socrates, orators in addressing popular
assemblies, lawyers in pleading cases, and all public speakers, appear
to have made use of the cithara as a sort of accompaniment, if for no
other purpose than to assure themselves of securing a proper pitch of
the voice. But Socrates drew attention to verbal distinctions, made
words the image of exact concepts, and in general set in operation an
era of scientific classification and purely intellectual development,
into which music could not enter, especially in a form so poor upon
the tonal side as Greek art then was, and always remained. Then came
the great orators, of whom Demosthenes was the greatest, who seems to
have been the first to speak without musical aids; and Plato, with his
philosophy; and after him the great Aristotle, the father of
scientific classification and orderly knowledge.

To a disciple of Aristotle, Aristoxenus, we are indebted for the first
really musical work which has come down to us. It is true that the
so-called Problems of Aristotle contain many of a musical character,
showing that this great master observed tonal effects in a purely
musical spirit, but he did not make a scientific treatise upon the
art. In his Politics he has much admirable matter relating to music,
and its influence upon the feelings and its office in life has hardly
been better explained than by him. But music upon the practical side
remained a sealed book.

Among the lucid musical questions of Aristotle's Problems (which, if
not by Aristotle himself, are at least the product of his time or the
succeeding century) he refers to the phenomena of sympathetic
resonance; he asks further, why it is that when _mese_ (the