Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/250

230 the guild of the "pipers" (collegium tibicinum, P. 202), whose true character as strolling musicians is evinced by their ancient privilege, maintained even in spite of the strictness of Roman police, of wandering through the streets at their annual festival, wearing masks and full of sweet wine. While dancing thus presents itself as an honourable function, and music as one subordinate but still necessary, and public corporations were therefore instituted for both of these, poetry appears rather as an incidental and, so to speak, uncalled for phenomenon, whether it may have come into existence by itself, or as an accompaniment to the movements of the dancers.

The earliest chant, in the view of the Romans, was that which the leaves sang to themselves in the green solitude of the forest. The whispers and pipings of the "favourable spirit" (Faunus, from favere) in the grove were repeated to men by the, or by the songstress (casmena, carmenta) who had the gift of listening to him, with the accompaniment of the pipe, and in rhythmically measured language (casmen, afterwards carmen, from canere) ;. Of a kindred nature to these soothsaying songs were the incantations properly so called, the formulæ for conjuring away diseases and other troubles, and the evil spells by which they prevented the rain and called down the lightning, or even enticed the seed from one field to another; only in these instances, probably from the very first, formulæ of mere sounds appear side by side with formulæ of words. More firmly rooted in tradition and equally primitive were the religious litanies which were sung and danced by the Salii and other priesthoods, and the only one of which that has come down to us, a dance-chant of the Arval Brethren in honour of Mars, probably composed to be sung in alternate parts, well deserves a place here. Errata: