composed in the early days of the empire; but even without such specimens it seems certain that in at least the two particulars specified (the correspondence of note with syllable and of time with quantity) the accomplished musicians of Rome copied their Greek predecessors. Belief in this is justified by the familiar phenomena of Latin lyrical measures, by the practical monopoly which the Greeks enjoyed in the profession of music-teaching at Rome, and finally by the absence of any ground for suspecting the contrary.

We have therefore a right to assume, provisionally, that in the 4th century of our era the hymns of Ambrose were sung to music which possessed much the same character. Being written in a measure borrowed from the lyric poets of paganism, it seems most probable that these hymns were designed for melodies such as those poets had used. It has been objected that, according to Augustine, Ambrose borrowed the idea of his hymns from "the Eastern church" and that the music of the Eastern churches at this time was by no means descended from that of pagan Greece. But what Augustine says on this subject is as follows:-"Justina, the mother of the boy emperor Valentinian, persecuted Thy servant Ambrose in the interest of her heresy. * * * The pious people kept guard in the church, prepared to die with their bishop, Thy servant. There my mother, Thy handmaid, bearing a chief part of those cares and watchings, lived in prayer. ***At this time it was instituted that after the manner of the Eastern church, hymns and psalms should be sung, lest the people should pine away in the tediousness of sorrow".(1) There is nothing in this about an importation of a foreign system of music: it appears only that the idea of singing hymns at all was borrowed. Indeed the passage seems to tell strongly

(1) Aug. Conf. IX. 7. 15 (Pilkington's translation).

against the view referred to, for it shows that the earliest Latin hymns were designed expressly for general congregational use. That Ambrose should have asked his devoted followers, for their own relief and encouragement, to sing hymns to a style of music with which they were wholly unacquainted, is as unlikely as that a modern revivalist should lead a miscellaneous meeting in the choruses of sacred music from Tannhäuser and Parsifal. It is much more probable,-indeed it is almost certain,that Ambrose would adapt for the purposes of his church, the same style of music that had been taught for several centuries in Italy.(1)

§31. Music of the Roman Empire in general. Thus far, then, it seems probable that in the Ambrosian music there was a more or less strict correspondence of note with syllable, and that the music was rhythmical, with its beat (in iambic measures) on the long syllables. But it is necessary to observe that the citizens of the Roman empire were by no means all of one practice in the matter of music. It is well known that in later days the usage of Milan and the usage of Rome were very dissimilar; and as for the earlier days, the very fact that Greek teachers of music were in such demand indicates a strong individuality in the Greek system. There must have been marked differences between the practices of tutored and untutored Italy, in the first centuries of the empire, and it is perhaps doubtful whether the Greek system ever reached all classes. The Christians who through the generations of persecution were meeting in

(1) From Ptolemy it appears that sweeping changes were made after the time of Aristoxenus,—chiefly tending towards simplification,—in standard Greek music (ct. Monro, p. 78):—but they seem to have affected only the keys and modes, leaving melodic principles untouched. The traditions of weird chromatic appoggiaturas, &c., in Ambrosian music, are not authenticated; but such embellishments, if they did exist, must have been mostly extra-metrical.

the secret chambers of the Catacombs are known to have had their music,- their "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs". To what sort of melodies these were sung we can probably never know exactly, but there is reason enough for believing that it was of a different character from that just described. The Christian religion had little to do, in those days, with fashion and the fine arts, and even in Italy the Greek culture may well have failed to reach it. As to other parts of the Empire, the antecedent probability is still stronger. The apostles did not travel as music teachers, and whatever their own native prejudices may have been, they did not enforce them upon their followers. If the words sung expressed a heartfelt Christian faith, it made little difference what modes or melodies were used with them. The styles of the early Christians at Rome, and elsewhere about the Mediterranean, were of a thoroughly popular character, we can be sure, simple and doubtless often crude; and where Latin was the native language, the music could hardly concern itself long with verbal prosody: but beyond that we can in general only conjecture from what we know of later developments(1).

§ 32. St. Augustine's Psalm. An interesting light, however, is thrown upon the character of the music in at least one part of the empire, by Augustine's Psalmus contra Donatistas. It will be remembered that from 395 to 430 Augustine was Bishop of Hippo. This psalm was written for didactic purposes, and was intended to make clear to the congregation the fallacies of the Donatist heresy, then rife in Numidia. We are fortunate in having Augustine's own account of the poem, viz:— "Volens etiam causam Donatistarum ad ipsius humillimi vulgi et omnino imperitorum atque idiotarum notitiam

(1) The substance of this paragraph is largely taken from Ambros, II. 9-11, and Fétis, IV. 8.

pervenire et eorum quantum fieri posset per nos inhaerere memoriae, psalmum qui eis cantaretur per latinas litteras feci. * * * * Iste psalmus sic incipit: Omnes qui gaudetis".(1) That is to say, he purposely adapted his psalm to the intellectual abilities, and undoubtedly also to the musical appreciativeness, of Christians of the lowest order of culture. The psalm itself begins as follows:Omnes qui gaudetis [de] pace, modo verum judicate. Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare: propter hoc Dominus noster voluit nos praemonere comparans regnum coelorum reticulo misso in mare, congreganti multos pisces, omne genus, hic et inde. Quos quum traxissent ad litus, tunc coeperunt separare, bonos in vasa miserunt, reliquos malos in mare. Quisquis novit Evangelium, recognoscat cum timore: videt reticulum ecclesiam, videt hoc saeculum mare. Of this style of versification St. Augustine himself says "Non aliquo carminis genere id fieri volui, ne me necessitas metrica ad aliqua verba quae minus sunt usitata compelleret". In order to secure perfect simplicity, he was able to dispense with prosody: and it is evident that the music known to the church at Hippo demanded neither metre nor rhythm in the words.

But there are elements of regularity in the psalm. There are 285 verses in all, and each one [with some dozen exceptions(2)] contains 16 syllables with a cæsura after the 8th. Vowels are generally not elided at the cæsura, though they are elsewhere almost uniformly. Each verse (except a few that are undoubtedly corrupt)

(1) Retractationum, l. 1. c. 20.

(2) In the text printed by Du Méril, I. 120, I noted four exceptional lines, two of 17 and two of 15 syllables each. [Of course the synizesis in Evangelium (4 syllables) and Ecclesiam (3 syllables) presents no difficulty]. Several verses, however, are made regular only by Du Méril's conjectural emendations. The careful examination of the Benedictine text made by Meyer (q. v. p. 20 et seq.) shows 21 irregular lines:-but this number is too liberal, as it includes several cases in which an obvious syncope is all that is needed to make the line normal.

ends with a paroxytone; so also do most of the first hemistichs: but there is no further accentual regularity. Each line ends with the vowel e, thus riming crudely Iwith all the rest. By the frequent recurrence of the first line the whole poem is divided into stanzas, which are further distinguished by the alphabetical consecutiveness of their initial letters. Each of these stanzas contains an even number of verses, (either 10 or 12), and at the end there is a concluding passage of 30 verses.(1)

§ 33. The music of Augustine's Psalm. Now as Augustine was clearly not striving for poetical effectiveness, these various elements of regularity must have been introduced for the sake of the music;-and they seem to show pretty plausibly what the general style of that music was. There must, in the first place, have been a very thorough correspondence of note for syllable and syllable for note, or the syllabic structure of the verse would hardly have been maintained so rigidly;—it was certainly of no intrinsic value. Secondly, the music must have been neither prosodical nor strongly rhythmical; in other words it was probably so slow and sustained that it made no difference, as the notes dragged along, whether the syllables that accompanied them were long or short, accented or unaccented. Thirdly, the music, though so unrhythmical in general movement, must have taken the form of some sort of tune, or melodic progression, which was repeated or at least imitated after every second verse. And lastly, there seems to have been something like a rhythmical cadence, involving the last two or three notes of each bar, which relieved the melody of its creeping monotony.

(1) These facts are stated in substance by Du Méril and in detail by Meyer. The careful analysis given by the latter makes it unnecessary for me to state more than the general results of my own examination of the psalm.