[Illustration: Fig. 172.--Heathen Caricature drawn on the wall of the Palatinate, in the Third Century, and preserved in the Kircher Museum, at Rome.--The object of veneration of the Christians is represented by a crucified figure with a donkey’s head, looking down on a small figure of a man: it is accompanied by a Greek inscription signifying, “Alexamenus worshipping his God.” Reduced to a quarter the size of the original.] In the fourth century, it was customary nearly everywhere, in the West as well as in the East, after having sung the praises of God, to put up prayers for the reigning sovereign and the leading potentates of the civilised world. For instance, when St. Athanasius cried out in the presence of the faithful, assembled in the splendid basilica of the Cæsars, “Let us pray for the safety of the very pious Emperor Constantine,” the whole assembly answered with one resounding voice, “Christe, auxiliare Constantio!” (“Help Constantine, O Christ!”) The preceding examples, and many others that it would be easy to gather from the history of early Christianity, prove that in the fourth century, in France, in Italy, in Spain, as well as in the churches of the East and of Africa, Christian worshippers were accustomed to recite either aloud or in a low tone, a set form of prayers, to chant, or rather slowly to intone psalms, and to sing hymns. Did not St. Pacôme order his monks to recite twice a day a psalmody which was composed of psalms interspersed with prayers? Did not St. Hilary of Poictiers lay the foundations of the Gallican liturgy, as St. Ambrose did those of the Lombard liturgy, at the time that St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine revised the liturgies of the Eastern and African Churches? [Illustration: Fig. 173.--Painting symbolical of the Catacombs of Rome: Jesus Christ, represented as Orpheus, fascinating with the sound of his lyre the wild and domestic animals, as also the trees, which are bending towards him to listen.--Fresco of the First or Second Century, from the Cemetery of Domitilla.]