Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/253

Rh which is foreign to the Greeks, and may be conjectured to arisen contemporaneously with the oldest Latin popular poetry. The following poem, belonging, it is true, to a far later age, may give an idea of it:—

Panegyrics as well as comic songs appear to have been uniformly sung in Saturnian metre, of course to the pipe, and probably in such a way that the cæsura in particular in each line was strongly marked; and in alternate singing the second singer probably took up the verse at this point. The Saturnian measure is, like every other occurring in Roman and Greek antiquity, based on quantity; but of all the antique metres perhaps it is the least thoroughly elaborated, for besides many other liberties it allows itself the greatest license in omitting the short syllables, and it is at the same time the most imperfect in construction, for these iambic and trochaic half-lines opposed to each other were but little fitted to develop a rhythmical structure adequate for the purposes of the higher poetry.

The fundamental elements of the national music and Melody. choral dancing of Latium, which must likewise have been established during this period, are buried in oblivion; except that the Latin pipe is reported to have been a short and slender instrument, provided with only four holes, and originally, as the name shows, made out of the light thighbone of some animal.

Lastly, the masks used in after times for the standing cha-