of the Vedic hymns, or like the medieval service of the Mass, contained the germs of a drama.
"But in Delos, Phœbus, thou art happiest;
There Ionians long-robed gather for thee
With their children and their lovely ladies;
So with boxing and with dance and singing
When the games are set they gladly praise thee.
He who met Ionians thus assembled
Well might think them gods, to old age strangers,
Looking on the men and well-girt women,
Ships of speed, and many forms of wealth,
And, beside, that wonder ne'er to perish,
Girls of Delos, handmaids of Apollo,
Handmaids of Apollo, the Far-Darter,
Who, when first they hymn Apollo's praises,
Next remember Artemis and Lêto,
Artemis rejoicing in the arrow;
Then a hymn of ancient men and women
Sing they, and delight the tribes assembled;
For they know to mimic tongues of all men
And the rattle of the castanets,
So that each would think his own speech uttered;
Such the skilful song they fit together."[1]
§ 31. The war-song, the marriage-hymn, the dirge, chants to the ancestral gods, songs of the spring and autumn festivals—these and such as these would nearly exhaust the varieties of the clan's choral poetry. Many of these we perhaps hear at a distance in the more refined music of individual song-makers—the war-song, for example, in the embatêria or anapæstic marches of Tyrtæus, the dirge in such fragments of the thrênos as those of Pindar. In any work aiming at an exhaustive treatment of early choral song, the close communion of music and early poetry would require a special study of vocal and instrumental music in their beginnings. Such treatment in the present work, however, is clearly impossible; and the student can only be referred to the works of specialists, such as that of Dr. Flach previously mentioned. The beginnings of music and metres appear
- ↑ Hymn to Delian Apollo, ll. 146–164.
