ence of octaves. Whatever
emotions may have been evoked by the music so produced, it cannot be
imagined that they were of the intensity or subtlety of which the
modern art and instruments are capable. Apart from the professionals,
many Roman youths and the majority of Roman girls learned both to play
and Sing, the instrument most affected being the harp, and the teacher
of harp-playing being held in the highest esteem and receiving the
highest emoluments. Sacrifices were regularly accompanied by the
flageolet; processions by this and the trumpet; the rites of Bacchus
by pipes, tambourines, and cymbals; performances in the theatre by an
immense orchestra of various instruments; the more elaborate dinners
by flute, harp, concerto of the two, singing, and such coarser and
more exciting performances as were to the taste of the host or his
company. The greatest houses kept their own choir and orchestra of
slaves; the less wealthy hired musicians as they needed them. As for
the Romans themselves, certain religious ceremonies called for singing
of boys and girls in chorus; and in a purely domestic way the women of
the house played on the harp and sang. Where there was singing, the
words dominated the music and not the contrary, but snatches from
recent popular pieces were sung and hummed in the streets for the sake
of their taking air, just as they are in modern times. We cannot
conceive of any Roman festivity without abundance of music. When in
spring at Baiae on the Bay of Naples the holiday frequenters of that
resort were rowed about the Lucrine Lake in their flower-bedecked
gondolas or boats with coloured sails, the musicians were no less in
evidence than they are now at every opportunity on the waters of the
same bay or in the evening on the Grand Canal at Venice. In the truly
Greek portion of the empire music, though no more advanced in method,
was for the most part of a finer and severer kind; but at
Alexandria--where it amounted to a mania--the influence of the native
Egyptian style, blent with the more passionate among the Greek modes,
had produced a music extremely exciting and highly demoralising.

On the whole, it may reasonably be held that music played at least as
important a part both in the houses and the public entertainments of
the ancient Romans as it plays in modern Italy. The artists were as
carefully trained, the audiences as critical or as receptive, the
personal affectations of the musicians as characte