Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/251

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The Latin of this chant and of kindred fragments of the Salian songs, which were regarded even by the philologists of the Augustan age as the oldest documents of their mother-tongue, is related to the Latin of the Twelve Tables somewhat as the language of the Nibelungen is related to the language of Luther; and we may perhaps compare these venerable litanies, as respects both language and contents, with the Indian Vedas.

Lyrical panegyrics and lampoons belonged to a later epoch. We might infer from the national character of the Italian people, that satirical songs must have abounded in Latium in ancient times, even if their prevalence had not been attested by the very ancient measures of police directed against them. But the panegyrical chants were of more importance. When a burgess was borne to burial, the bier was followed by a female relative or friend, who, accompanied by a piper, sang his dirge (nenia). In like manner at banquets boys who, according to the fashion of those days, attended their fathers even at feasts out of their own houses, sang by turns songs in praise of their ancestors, sometimes to the pipe, sometimes simply reciting them without accompaniment (assa voce canere). The custom of men singing at banquets in succession was probably borrowed from the Greeks, and that not till a later age.