Throughout the whole of antiquity the favourite contest was wrestling, and the importance of this depended on the fact that the whole body was exercised at the same time, and all the muscles came into play; and also that it was not an exercise

performed by one single man, but was an immediate measuring of strength by two opponents, and, therefore, even more than the other contests, required full bodily power. Even in the Homeric age, therefore, wrestling played an important part, and the deep hold it took on Greek life is shown by the great number of technical expressions taken from wrestling which in metaphorical form found their way into the ordinary every-day language; no other exercise had so large a store of technical expressions; indeed, it is absolutely impossible for us to find words to express them all at the present day. Wrestling, like other gymnastic exercises, was carried on at first with some drapery round the loins, and afterwards without any clothing. As a preparation, the combatants rubbed their whole bodies with oil, with a view to making their limbs more supple and elastic. For this purpose there were special rooms in the gymnasia and wrestling schools, in which stood large vessels, filled with oil, from which they filled their own little flasks; then they poured a little oil out of these into their hands, and either rubbed their bodies with it or else had them rubbed by one of the attendants of the gymnasia appointed for the purpose (ἀλείπτης). But as this oiling and the perspiration which resulted from the contest would have made the body too smooth and slippery, and absolutely impossible to grasp, they covered themselves, when the anointing was finished, with fine dust, taken from special pits, or else prepared on purpose. This was supposed also to serve a hygienic purpose, for it was assumed that the dust prevented excessive perspiration, and in consequence saved the strength; it was also regarded as advantageous because it closed the pores and sheltered them from the air, which might have an injurious effect. Oil, perspiration, dust, and also the soft sand, which, when the wrestlers continued their contest on the ground, clung to their bodies, together formed a thick crust, which could not have been sufficiently removed by a mere warm bath; therefore the wrestlers used a stlengis, or strigil, for cleansing their bodies, rubbing off the dirt partly themselves and partly with the help of attendants, and afterwards took a warm bath. The action of this scraping, which, in spite of its unaesthetic nature, gave rise to many graceful attitudes, has been often plastically represented by artists; a good copy has come down to us of the most celebrated of these figures, the Apoxyomenos of Lysippus. The bath was usually followed by oiling the body once more, because the use of oil was regarded as good for the health and tending to strengthen the limbs. As already mentioned, this anointing was accompanied by a kind of massage, a pressing and kneading of the body, which the rubber understood, and which was regarded as a hygienic method, so that one who was specially skilled in it was called a medical-rubber (ἰατραλείπτης), and in a measure combined the duties of physician and rubber. The constant exposure to fresh air and accustoming of the naked body to the rays of the sun, combined with the oiling and dusting mentioned above, produced in the wrestlers especially, though to some extent in all the athletes, a very dark complexion, which the ancients regarded as a mark of health and of manly courage, and often held up to admiration in contrast to the pale colouring of the artisans and stay-at-homes who “sat in the shade.” There were two principal methods in ordinary wrestling—standing and ground wrestling. In the first kind of contest everything depended on throwing an opponent, either by skill, or by certain tricks which were allowed in wrestling, in such a way that his shoulder touched the earth, while the other kept his position; throwing once, however, did not decide the victory, but in order to be victorious in the standing wrestling-bout it was necessary for a man to throw his opponent three times in this manner. When both opponents fell together while wrestling without clasping each other, they jumped up and began the contest afresh; but if they grasped each other firmly when they fell, so that the contest was not yet decided, the wrestling usually passed into the second stage, in which both wrestled while lying on the ground, when now one now the other might get the advantage, until one of the two declared himself conquered, and gave up the struggle. The wrestlers in the celebrated Florentine marble group, represented in Fig. 128, are in this position. This wrestling on the ground, however, only took place in the boys’ gymnastic school, and afterwards in the public contests of Pancratiasts (see below, page 296), and professional athletes; in the great contests and the Pentathlon only standing wrestling was allowed. The mode in which the wrestlers began the combat has been clearly described by several writers, and often represented on monuments. Each combatant took his place, with his legs somewhat apart, his right foot forward, stretched out his arms, drew his head a little between his shoulders, and thrust forward the upper part of his body, back, shoulders, and neck, in order to protect the lower part somewhat from the attack of his opponent. In this manner the combatants stepped towards each other, each watching for the moment when the other would expose himself in some way of which he could take advantage, and as they were naturally both as much as possible on their

guard, it was often a considerable time before they could begin the contest by seizing hold of their opponents. But when it was once begun, the masters or other officials who superintended watched to see that no tricks contrary to tradition and rule were made use of, that there was no striking or biting; but still, they were allowed to make use of certain tricks or feints in order to deceive the enemy or gain an advantage over him. Among the methods allowed was throttling, either by touching the opponent’s neck or throwing an arm round it, or pushing the elbow under his chin, and sometimes the combatant who was attacked in this way was forced from want of breath to declare himself conquered, even without being thrown; similarly his opponent might force him, by pressing his body together to abandon the contest; and in the ground wrestling it sometimes happened that the combatant who had the upper hand knelt

down on the one who had been thrown to the ground and throttled him until he asked for mercy. Twisting and bending the limbs was also allowed, thrusting an arm or a foot into the opponent’s belly, pushing or forcing him from the spot, which, if the hands were occupied, was often done by means of the forehead, the two combatants dashing their heads against each other like two angry bulls; this was a very favourite trick, and is frequently shown on works of art. In Fig. 129, taken from a vase painting we see two wrestlers who have grappled, each holding his opponent’s right arm with his own left; their foreheads are pressed together, one has drawn back his right foot in order to increase his resisting power. The combatants in Fig. 130, are fighting in a similar manner, the left hand of one seizes the right arm of his opponent, while his right arm is thrown round his body; the left hand of the other meantime attacks his enemy’s back. On the left a superintendent, who wears a cloak, and holds a branch in his hand, stands looking on; on the right a young man is running quickly away. Among the permitted feints was a sudden thrust of the leg, which hit the opponent’s knee from behind with the foot in such a manner as to throw him, or, if this was impossible, a similar blow was attempted on the side; they also seized an opponent by the leg or ankle in such a way as to lift it from the ground with a violent impulse, so that he must fall backwards. Sometimes a strong and skilful wrestler would put his arms round his opponent’s hips in such a way as to lift him entirely from the ground, and turn him over with his head downwards. On the vase painting represented in Fig. 131, in the group on the right, one of the wrestlers has lifted up his opponent in this manner, and the latter is trying to free himself from the arms which are holding him. In the other group, one of the wrestlers with his right arm seizes the left arm of his opponent and tries to press him down with his body, thrusting his head over the left shoulder of the other; the latter, however, thrusts his head over his opponent’s back, and with his right arm seizes his opponent’s right arm from behind. The richly-clad youth standing by presents an almost feminine appearance, holding a staff and flower in his hands, and it is not clear for what purpose he is there. Similar tricks and manoeuvres were used in ground wrestling. Besides this they also attempted to entangle the opponent’s legs in theirs, in order to prevent him from standing up again. There were a great many similar modes or plans of wrestling, all with a special terminology, and it seems as though no gymnastic exercise had been so thoroughly developed into a real art as that of wrestling.

Boxing, which we hear of among the funeral games in honour of Patroclus, was also practised in the historic period, but as a mode of fighting it was not actually necessary for the gymnastic training of every

Greek, but was rather studied by those who desired to win prizes in the public games, and to obtain honour and reward by their bodily skill and strength. We are accustomed to regard the gymnastic training of the Greeks as tending not only to the development of the body, but also to that of the mind; and we cannot deny that boxing, especially in the form which it assumed in the course of centuries, was a rough sport, and that the pleasure which the Greeks undoubtedly took in watching it, though not quite of so degrading a nature as the cruel delight taken by the Romans in the fights of gladiators and wild beasts, yet, considered in connection with certain other popular sports, such as cock-fighting, must be taken as a sign that even the high degree of culture, which the Athenians had undoubtedly attained by the fifth century, was not quite sufficient to suppress completely the animal instinct in man. After all, our much-lauded nineteenth century is not unacquainted with such amusements as boxing, pigeon-shooting, and similar sports.

Boxing, like wrestling, was subject to special rules, from which we see that more stress was laid on artistic and elegant methods than on the mere evidence of great bodily strength and rude force. Specially skilful boxers, indeed, devoted themselves chiefly to wearing out their enemy by keeping strictly on the defensive—that is, parrying all his blows with their arms, and thus forcing him at last to give up the contest, rather than making him unfit to fight by well-aimed blows. They distinguished, too, in the defensive between correctly-aimed blows and mere rough hitting, which sometimes gave a combatant the victory if he happened to possess considerable strength, but by no means won reputation for him. All the same, severe bodily injuries, or, at any rate, lasting deformities, especially in the head and face, were inevitably connected with boxing, and it was by no means unusual for boxers to have their ears completely disfigured and beaten quite flat, and, indeed, we see this on some of the ancient heads; afterwards it became customary to use special bandages for protecting the ears. A practice which made boxing especially rough, and sometimes even dangerous to life, was that of covering the hands with leathern thongs. Originally these thongs were tolerably harmless; they consisted merely of leather, and were put on in such a way that the fingers remained free, while the thongs extended a little way above the wrist and covered part of the lower arm—of course, in such a way as not to check the motion of the hand. But this gentler kind, which were still capable of inflicting rather serious injuries, were afterwards in use only for the preliminary practice before a serious contest; for the latter they used heavy boxing-gloves of hardened bull’s hide, into which knobs of lead, etc., were worked. We can easily imagine what terrible wounds might be inflicted by a blow from one of these. Many of the old athletes could show bodies covered with wounds like that of an old soldier, and the writers of epigrams laughingly compared the bodies of athletes to sieves full of holes. And although they were forbidden purposely to give blows which threatened the life of an opponent, yet it sometimes happened, as in the notorious contest between Creugas and Damoxenus, that in the excitement of the moment the combatants forgot the established rules, and the professional contest turned into mere brutality, from which those of the spectators whose feelings were of a less coarse nature turned away with horror.

For the contest they generally took their position in such a manner as not to turn their whole body to

the enemy, but only one side, and, as a rule, the left. It was in the nature of the contest that a constant change between attack and defence must take place; the attitude represented on numerous monuments, in which the left arm is used for parrying, the right for attack, was the common one, not only as an opening, but repeated at each new phase, though a change would sometimes take place, and the right arm be used in defence, the left for attack. On the vase painting represented in Fig. 132 we see two boxers, whose huge proportions show that they were endowed with unusual strength; both have covered their arms and hands with heavy thongs, one is apparently countering with the left, the other parrying with the right; his left aims at his enemy’s head. On the right stands a winged Goddess of Victory, on the left a

boxer with the thongs, raising his left arm to his head. The vase painting, Fig. 133, represents two boxers, one of whom aims a well-directed blow with his left at the breast of the other, who totters. On one side lie some poles, as well as implements belonging to the wrestling school, strigil, sponge, etc. There are also two boxers on the vase painting represented in Fig. 127. The one to the right has “got home” so effectively on the head with his left, that the other, who has tried to guard with his left arm, has to give ground, and seems to have had enough, for he is raising the first finger of his right hand, a sign that he begs for mercy and declares himself conquered. The thongs here are only worn on the right hand of one of the combatants, but this was probably merely an omission on the part of the painter.

As preliminary practice in boxing, especially in learning the commonest attacks and parries, they used a kind of quintain (κώρυκος), a bladder or leather ball, hung up and filled with sand; this exercise is often represented on old monuments, and most clearly on the so-called “Ficoronese Cista.” This striking at the quintain was one of the regular contests in the gymnasium, for though the dangerous fighting with the leaded thongs was left to professional athletes, yet a trial of skill in the commoner kind of harmless boxing, in which there was no risk of losing teeth, etc., was a very favourite practice, and this, no doubt, is meant when we find boxing mentioned even among the gymnastic exercises of boys.

Similar was the Pancration, as difficult as it was dangerous, which was unknown to the heroic age, a combination of boxing and wrestling, which, though included among the exercises of the boys and youths, was only of real importance for professional athletes. Here all the parts of the body came into play, tricks and cunning feints to lead an opponent astray were permissible, and as important as bodily strength and powerful fists. The combatants fought naked, like the wrestlers, after oiling and strewing dust over their bodies; but they did not use thongs, which would have been in the way in wrestling, nor were they permitted to strike with the whole fist, but only with the bent fingers. They began the fight standing, as in wrestling, and the special difficulty was, in taking the offensive, to avoid being seized by an opponent as well as to parry an unexpected blow from his fist. Blows were dealt not only in the standing fight, but also in the ground wrestling, and in the pancration they made even more use of their feet for hitting and kicking than in the separate contests in wrestling and boxing; they also tried to twist their opponent’s hands and break his fingers, since the main object was to make him incapable of fighting. It is, therefore, natural that among professional athletes the pancration was regarded as the most important of all modes of fighting.

Another contest, the Pentathlon, was of a very different nature. In the pancration the two modes of wrestling and boxing were combined together, but in the pentathlon the different contests were undertaken one after another by a number of competitors, and he who did well in all of them, and took the first place in some, was declared victor in the whole. The contest consisted in jumping, running, throwing the quoit, throwing the spear, and wrestling. Although the combination of these five contests was arranged with a view to the public games, yet it also had some educational importance; for difficult and easy contests were here combined, both those which required skill as well as those in which mere bodily strength carried off the palm, and thus the pentathlon was well calculated to develop the whole body harmoniously, and to keep professionals from devoting too much attention to one side of gymnastics to the disadvantage of the others. For this reason it was introduced among the exercises of the boys. We have no conclusive information about the proceedings in the pentathlon, the order in which the various contests followed one another, and the conditions on which a combatant was declared to be victorious. There is a good deal of difference of opinion among the moderns who have ventured hypotheses on the subject. One great difficulty in deciding this question arises from the fact that, though a considerable number of combatants might take part in the four first-mentioned contests, wrestling must in the nature of things be performed by only two; we must therefore assume that the contests were arranged in such a manner that only two combatants should be left for the last. Probably they began with running, for which a considerable number could enter; supposing there were very many, they may have had several series of combats afterwards. The five best runners would then enter upon the second contest, perhaps throwing the spear; then the worst of these five would be thrown out, and the remaining four enter for the next, the jump; the three best jumpers would then throw the quoit, and the two best quoit-throwers would wrestle finally for the palm. Whether this or something similar was the arrangement, it might happen that a combatant who had never taken the first place in one of the first four contests might carry off the victory at last, but they avoided this by the rule that, if anyone took the first place in the first three contests or in three of the four, the two last or the last might be left out, and he would be considered victor in the pentathlon. Consequently, the final wrestling match only took place if after the fourth contest the victory was still undecided—that is, if among the two best quoit-throwers neither had taken the first place three times. It might, therefore, happen that a man who took the first place twice and the second place once in the first three contests was thrown out in the fourth, and the victory fell to another who had never taken the first place except at the last. Still, this apparent injustice was counterbalanced by the fact that the last contest was really the most difficult, while a certain average excellence in the former contests was required of everyone who entered the pentathlon at all; also it was no small merit to keep a place among the victors in all five contests, though it might not be the first or second. Of course these are merely hypotheses; we have not sufficient materials for attaining certainty in this matter.

A number of other gymnastic exercises were of greater importance for the gymnasium than for the public games. Among those which were merely preliminary training for more serious tasks we have already mentioned the dumb-bells and the quintain. Others bear some resemblance to our own gymnastics; thus, for instance, exercises in bending the knees, which were especially popular at Sparta, and also practised by girls there; thrusting the arms forward and backward whilst standing on tiptoe, hopping on one foot, or changing the foot, etc. Ball was also included among the games of a semi-gymnastic character, as with us, too, it plays some part in gymnastic exercises; rope-pulling was also a favourite practice, but throughout the whole of antiquity far the most popular recreative game in the gymnastic schools was ball-playing, and there were special places devoted to it, just as there were afterwards in the baths or thermae. The ancient writers mention several other occupations of this kind, half-way between serious exercises and mere games; undoubtedly there were many others concerning which we have no information, and the relief in Fig. 134 probably shows us one of these. It seems to represent a game with a large hard ball, which was thrown up into the air and caught on the thigh, and, perhaps, thrown up again into the air from there.

Many exercises of a partly military character were also practised in the gymnasia. Besides throwing the spear, which was regarded as an entirely gymnastic exercise, and was practised at the public contests, there was archery, which, in the Alexandrine age, as we previously mentioned, even found a place in the curriculum of the Attic youths. This was also the case with the Cretans, who were renowned as excellent archers at the time of Plato, and probably even earlier. They used for the purpose a bow constructed of horn or hard wood; bows were of two different shapes, one which was common in the East, and was already described by Homer, in which two horn-shaped ends were connected by a straight middle piece; the other was a simpler shape, in which the whole bow consisted of one piece of elastic wood, scarcely curved at all when the bow was not bent, and which, when bent, acquired a semi-circular shape. As a rule, when the bow was not in use the string was only fastened at one end. Before shooting, it was attached to the hook at the other end by means of a little ring or eye. A good deal of strength was needed to bend the bow far enough to attach the string. In shooting, they drew back the feathered arrow, on which a notch fitted, along with the string towards the breast, holding the bow firmly in the left hand. The vase painting depicted in Fig. 135 represents archery practice. The target here is the wooden figure of a cock set upon a column; of the three youths who are practising one shoots standing, the second kneeling, the common position for an archer, and the third is just about to draw his bow pressing his knee against it. All three use the second kind of bow. It is, of course, only an artistic licence that the archers are placed so near their goal; similarly the arrows are still flying while the two archers are about to shoot fresh ones.

We have already had occasion several times to point to the difference between the gymnastic training of youths, continued into manhood with a view to strengthening the body, and the professional gymnastics of the athletes; we must, therefore, say a few words about the position as well as the training of the latter. As the public games increased in importance, and the glory gained by the victors induced ambitious youths and men to strive for a wreath in the gymnastic contests, and thus gain undying fame for themselves and their native city, it gradually became the custom for especially strong and skilful athletes (ἀγωνισταί) to make the development of their body for these gymnastic contests the object of their life, in order, by constant practice, by a particular diet and mode of life calculated to increase their strength, to attain the highest position in this profession, and thus to be almost sure of victory. In this way “agonistics,” which was originally only a development of gymnastics in accordance with the rules of art, became a regular profession, and those who devoted themselves to it were distinctively known as athletes. As athleticism became a profession and a means of making money, it ceased, of course, to be an occupation worthy of a free and noble citizen; and it is, therefore, natural that at Sparta, where every profession by which money could be made was looked down upon, it should have made no way, and that in other places, too, it was only men of the lower classes who devoted themselves to it, however enticing it might seem to an ambitious youth who desired to attain the material advantages enjoyed by the victors in these contests, as well as the glorious honours with which they were specially distinguished.

The athletes received their training from a trainer (γυμναστής), who must be carefully distinguished from the gymnastic teacher of the boys (παιδοτσριβής). The trainer instructed his pupils in the higher branches of gymnastics, practised frequently with them, and probably also accompanied them to the public games, in order to instruct them to the very last moment, since the victory of a pupil was also honourable and advantageous to the master. The exercises probably took place in the gymnasia belonging to the trainers, or in the public gymnastic places; and consisted not merely in a methodical increase in the usual gymnastic exercises until the highest achievements were attained, but also in many which were not practised elsewhere, and which were not calculated to harden the body or make the limbs supple. Along with the gymnastic training they observed, as already mentioned, a very careful mode of life, which was superintended by the rubber, whose half-medical training has been already alluded to. This diet was in part observed at all times, but was especially severe just before the games, at which an athlete had to appear. In ancient times the principal nourishment of the athletes was fresh cheese, dried figs, and wheaten porridge; in later times they abandoned this vegetarian diet for meat, and gave the preference to beef, pork, and kid. Bread might not be eaten with meat, but was taken at breakfast, while the principal meal consisted of meat; confectionery was forbidden; wine might only be taken in moderate quantities. In addition to this diet, which was prescribed to the athletes for the whole year, a special training had to be followed at times, especially when preparing for the games, which lasted for more than three-quarters of the year; at these times the athletes every day, after the conclusion of their practice, had to consume an enormous quantity of such food as was permitted them, and then digest it in a long-continued sleep. By gradually increasing the amount, an athlete succeeded at last in consuming an enormous quantity of meat, and at length this became a habit and even a necessity. By this means they attained, not, it is true, hardening of the muscles, but the corpulence which is often represented in the ancient pictures, and which might be advantageous in certain contests, especially in wrestling and the pancration, since it enabled them more easily to press down and wear out their opponents; on the other hand, this artificially-produced corpulence was very unhealthy, and it is natural that these athletes were liable to many kinds of disease, especially apoplectic strokes.

The training and mode of life of the athletes just described was obviously not suitable for all kinds of gymnastic contests. Such diet would have been very pernicious for running and jumping; wrestling and boxing and the pancration were their chief domain, and it was in these that the more celebrated athletes of antiquity, whose names have come down to us—viz., Milo, Polydamas, Glaucus, and the rest—were specially distinguished. Their rewards were of various kinds. The victors in the Olympian games were allowed to set up a statue in the Grove of Altis, at Olympia, at their own expense or that of their relations, sometimes even of the state to which the victor belonged; and at home, too, they very frequently had the same honour of a public statue assigned to them. When they returned from the games, they held a solemn entry into their own town, dressed in purple, riding on a car drawn by four white horses, accompanied by their friends and relations and a rejoicing crowd; it was even an ancient custom to pull down a piece of the city wall, in order to show that a city which could produce such citizens required no walls for its defence. Then followed a banquet in honour of the victor, in which hymns were sung in his praise. Rewards were also given in coin. At Athens, after the time of Solon, the victor in the Olympian games received 500 drachmae, the victor in one of the three other great national contests a hundred drachmae; in later times they even had the right of dining every day at the public expense in the town-hall (πρυτανεῖον), and they also enjoyed the honour of sitting on the front benches of the theatre (προεδρία). Moreover, most of the professional athletes, if they lived carefully and abstained from all departures from their customary diet and mode of life, were able to continue their contests for a good many years, sometimes thirty or more, and were thus able to pile honour on honour and reward on reward. The unlimited admiration which the mass of the people, and especially the youth, who were easily won by exhibitions of strength, gave to these combatants, who seem to us at the present day to have been but rough prize-fighters, stands in strong contrast to the judgment pronounced on them by men of real intellectual development, especially by the philosophers. They rightly complained that this one-sided development of the body was perfectly useless to the State, since the athletes were only capable in their own domain, but were quite unable to endure fatigues and undertake military service; they pointed out that the mode of life which aimed merely at increasing the bodily strength tended to dwarf the intellect, and that, therefore, the athletes were absolutely useless for political as well as for all intellectual purposes. Wise educators, therefore, disapproved of athletic training, and, indeed, the greatest warriors and statesmen of Greece seem always to have despised it.

CHAPTER IX.

MUSIC AND DANCING.

The commonest instruments in ordinary use were stringed. These were well suited for solo-playing as well as for accompanying songs, and the singer could accompany himself with them, which would have been impossible in the case of wind instruments. The stringed instruments used in Greece were all played by striking or thrumming, and not by means of a bow; in fact, it is a disputed point whether the ancients, and in particular the Egyptians, were at all acquainted with the bow; in any case we do not find it in classical antiquity. Among the various kinds of stringed instruments which had either existed in Greece since the oldest times or been introduced from foreign countries, especially from the East or from Egypt, there were only two which were of special importance for educational and ordinary purposes. These were the lyre and the cithara, which were closely related to one another, and only distinguished by the effect of the sound. Of these the simpler, and probably also the older, was the lyre, which, according to a Greek legend, was an invention of Hermes, who constructed the first lyre out of a tortoise, which he used as a sounding-board, stretching cords across it. Even in later times tortoise-shells seem to have been actually used in the construction of lyres, and on works of art, especially vase pictures (compare the “Bowl of Duris,” which represents school teaching in Attica, Fig. 75), we can plainly distinguish the markings of the tortoise on the outer side of the instrument. It must, however, have been more usual to construct the sounding-board of wood, and only adorn it externally with tortoise-shell or other decorative materials; the writers mention boxwood and ilex as the principal materials for lyres, as well as ivory, which last was probably used for decorative purposes. In the Homeric hymn to Hermes, in which the invention of the lyre by the god is described in detail, Hermes cuts little stems of reed, which he fastens into the shell in gridiron fashion and covers with ox-skin, and by this means obtains the necessary covering for the sounding-board. In later times the proceeding was probably different, since the usual material for the sounding-board was undoubtedly wood, and the covering was, no doubt, made of wood also. But the shape of the sounding-board always remained the same; the outer side was a good deal raised, while the inner side on which the strings were attached was a level surface. Into this sounding-board two arms were fixed, which are almost always represented on Greek monuments as merely curved pieces of wood fastened on the inner side of the sounding-board; but the custom which in later times, especially in the Alexandrine and Roman periods, became very common, of not merely constructing these arms in the shape of horns, but even making them of real horns of chamois or gazelles, no doubt existed even in the ancient Greek period.

At their upper ends the two arms, which might be called horns, were fastened together by a cross-piece, called the yoke, which was usually constructed of hard wood, and on to this the strings, constructed of sheep-guts, were stretched. Of these the lyre usually had seven, all of equal length, which was also the case in the cithara. These strings, as we can clearly see in the lyres of the above-mentioned bowl (Fig. 75), passed downwards over a bridge consisting of a piece of reed fixed on the flat covering of the sounding-board, and were then fastened singly, probably to a little square board, such as we see on the lyre hanging on the wall in Fig. 75. Probably this little board could be taken out, and thus, if a string were to break, the injury could be easily repaired. Occasionally the strings were merely tied to the yoke; but, as this primitive method would make it impossible to tune them, we must assume that there was usually some other contrivance, though neither writers nor monuments give us sufficient information about it. On the lyres in Fig. 75, and also in other pictures of stringed instruments, we perceive at the upper ends of the strings, longish rolls which in other places are shaped more like rings or discs, and are probably set at an angle to the stretched strings. An hypothesis has been set up by Von Jan, who infers, from ancient writers, after comparing similar contrivances in Nubian stringed instruments, that these rolls were constructed of thick skin or hide, taken from the backs of oxen or sheep; the strings were fastened into these adhesive covers and twisted along with them round the yoke of the lyre until they attained the right tune, and they were then fastened into their proper position by strongly pressing down these rolls of hide. Still, this rough mode of fastening which could only permit of very superficial tuning of the strings, does not appear very satisfactory; indeed, Von Jan himself calls attention to a far more artistic contrivance observed in some of the pictures which has not yet, however, been satisfactorily explained. There seems also to have been a third mode of fastening; sometimes the whole yoke was divided into as many little pulleys connected by pegs as there were strings, so that each string had, as it were, its own yoke, by the tightening of which it could be tuned without the other strings being affected. We have no further details about this construction.

On the vase painting represented in Fig. 136, which presents a number of women with musical instruments, perhaps Muses, one is leaning back comfortably in her easy-chair, and playing on the lyre, here represented with six strings; the woman standing in front of her seems about to tune the strings of her cithara. The cithara differed from the lyre chiefly in the form and structure of the sounding-board. This was constructed of wood, often artistically decorated and adorned with valuable materials, precious stones, etc., and was much larger and more arched than the sounding-board of the lyre. It usually had a straight base, and sometimes sounding holes, which was less often the case with the lyre, and its arms were far wider and squarer, and, being also hollow, seem to have helped to strengthen the sound. On some

instruments it is clear that the sounding-board and the arms which rise out of it were constructed out of a single piece, and that, consequently, the cavities are in connection; on some the arms are of a different colour from the sounding-board, usually white, which would suggest ivory; still, we must not on this account conclude that they were constructed separately, since it is possible that the different colouring was only an external ornamentation or veneer for the arms, and need not lead us to assume a different material for the whole structure. The arms were usually slightly curved outwards, but turned inwards again at the top. The instrument in Fig. 136 is one of the simplest, since the arms are quite plain; on other examples we often see elaborate carving. The bridge which unites the two arms is either a perfectly simple rod, as in the case of the lyre (compare Fig. 136), or else the arms have at their projecting ends solid handles or crooks, which probably assisted the tuning. The number of strings was originally limited in the cithara; seven was at first the usual number, and this number was even fixed by law at Sparta, but in other places nine, ten, or eleven strings were used. The writers and pictures give us no more accurate information about the mode in which these strings were fastened to the yoke and to the sounding-board than they do about the lyre; the pictures dating from the Roman period are much clearer in that respect, but we cannot safely use them as authorities.

The lyre was generally played sitting. This instrument, which was a light one, was held close to the left side, as we see in Figs. 75 and 136, and supported by the seat of the chair. The cithara was played standing, and it was therefore necessary, on account of the considerable weight of the instrument, to suspend it by a band over the shoulders. This band is seldom represented in works of art, but it must always be assumed to be there, since the mode in which the stringed instruments were played would not leave a hand free for holding it. Both lyre and cithara were played in such a manner that the strings were thrummed from without by the left hand, but struck from within by an instrument called plectrum, held in the right hand, and constructed of wood, ivory, or some half-precious stone. This plectrum was fastened by a string to the instrument (compare again Fig. 75). There were, however, exceptions to this mode of playing; thus, a woman in Fig. 136 apparently does not use the plectrum, but thrums the strings of the lyre with both hands, and at other times it seems as though the left hand and the plectrum, which was held in the right, were not used at the same time, but in turns. Thus, in Fig. 75, both teacher and pupil are only thrumming the instrument with their left hand, and leaving the plectrum at rest. The practical object of fastening the plectrum to the instrument was that it enabled the player at any moment to pass from the use of the plectrum to the fingers of the right hand, and vice versa. An hypothesis based on works of art, and apparently very plausible, has been made by Von Jan, who supposes that musicians, as a rule, accompanied their song with the play of the left hand, and only used the plectrum in the pauses.

Besides the lyres and citharae, among which we must certainly include the Homeric Phorminx, of which we find various kinds but all with the same main features, there are several other stringed instruments, to which we can, as a rule, assign the ancient names with some certainty, though we find a very great number of designations for these instruments in different writers, and apparently most of them were introduced into Greece from the East and from Egypt. One of the safest identifications relates to a large, many-stringed instrument, of a shape which closely resembles our modern harp (Fig. 136). This is played by the third woman in the centre, and is also found elsewhere (compare the vase painting, Fig. 137). We almost always find this instrument in the hands of women; they play it seated, resting the horizontal base on their laps, while the broader sounding-board which joins this at an angle, rests against the upper part of their body; they strike the short strings near them with the right hand, without a plectrum, and with the left hand the long strings which are further from them. The pictures sometimes show contrivances for tuning, shortening, or lengthening the strings; the number of strings varies. As the shape is usually triangular, we may probably assume that this instrument is the one called Trigonon. Possibly some of the examples may be instances of the Sambuca, since this, too, had a triangular form.