by pipes, tambourines, and cymbals; performances in the theatre by an immense orchestra of various instruments; the more elaborate dinners by flute, harp, concerto of the two, singing, and such coarser and more exciting performances as were to the taste of the host or his company. The greatest houses kept their own choir and orchestra of slaves; the less wealthy hired musicians as they needed them. As for the Romans themselves, certain religious ceremonies called for singing of boys and girls in chorus; and in a purely domestic way the women of the house played on the harp and sang. Where there was singing, the words dominated the music and not the contrary, but snatches from recent popular pieces were sung and hummed in the streets for the sake of their taking air, just as they are in modern times. We cannot conceive of any Roman festivity without abundance of music. When in spring at Baiae on the Bay of Naples the holiday frequenters of that resort were rowed about the Lucrine Lake in their flower-bedecked gondolas or boats with coloured sails, the musicians were no less in evidence than they are now at every opportunity on the waters of the same bay or in the evening on the Grand Canal at Venice. In the truly Greek portion of the empire music, though no more advanced in method, was for the most part of a finer and severer kind; but at Alexandria--where it amounted to a mania--the influence of the native Egyptian style, blent with the more passionate among the Greek modes, had produced a music extremely exciting and highly demoralising. On the whole, it may reasonably be held that music played at least as important a part both in the houses and the public entertainments of the ancient Romans as it plays in modern Italy. The artists were as carefully trained, the audiences as critical or as receptive, the personal affectations of the musicians as characteristic, and their effect on emotional admirers of the opposite sex as great, as they are at the present day. The difference between the two ages consists in the nature of the music itself, and in the instruments through which it is respectively delivered; and in these respects the advantage is entirely with the modern world. CHAPTER XXIII THE LAST SCENE OF ALL--BURIAL AND TOMBS