of music,--'of music, that is, of the genuine kind.' From
earliest childhood the Areadians were taught to sing hymns
and paeans to the gods and heroes of their native land; as
boys, as youths, and even up to the thirtieth year they were
under obligation, though amidst the austere surroundings of
a hard life, to keep up practice of the more elaborate nomes
of renowned composers, to exercise themselves not only in
parade to martial music as used by the Spartans, but also in
dancing and the music of the pipe, so as to take part in choruses
at the Dionysiac festivals, and to qualify themselves to sing
when called upon in turn at private festivities. Nor was the
musical instruction confined to the men, for the Arcadian
women also took part with them in frequent assemblies and
sacred celebrations, and choruses like that in the Cretan dance
on the Homeric shield, were habitually composed, in obedience
to ancient Arcadian legislation, of maidens and youths
together.

Modern experience proves no doubt that however far the
art may have acted as a palliative, prevalence of exceptional
musical taste and even of distinguished musical genius have
remained compatible still with the most uncouth of all national
manners and with sufficient laxity of morals. It was how-
ever from the realities of life under such ancient conditions
as we read of here, that poets derived that idealised Arcadian
life which the world could now ill spare from poetry and
from pleasing habitual associations; and while Polybius, so
familiar with the country, ascribes the origin of these human-
ising institutions to remote antiquity, he proves their con-
tinuance to much later times than we are now concerned
with, by his reference to the nomes of Philoxenus and
Timotheus; and statesman as he is, he still retains such
true Hellenic confidence in their moderating power as to
urge the illiberal tribe that occasioned his digression to
embrace, with God to aid, among the better influences of
culture, that of music above all.

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