and the banks of the Euphrates--in a word, from all those who hold in honor vigils and psalms performed in common.’ It may be remarked that the antiphon originally was merely the alternate singing of two choirs. Later it came to mean the solo refrain intoned by the high priest before the biblical psalm or canticle and repeated by the choir when the psalm or canticle is finished. According to the rules of St. Benedict this solo refrain was intended to give (_imponere_) the melody to the singers. Musically, says Gevaert, it forms the introduction and finale of the psalmodic chant to which it is bound by a community of mode. It probably took the place of an earlier instrumental introduction and finale, as, for some reason or reasons upon which it is idle to speculate, instruments were excluded from the services of the primitive church. It was in the monasteries of the East, of Syria and Egypt, that the forms of the liturgy first began to take shape, and in Antioch and Alexandria there developed schools of singing which were to the Greek churches of the East what the _schola cantorum_ was to the Latin churches of the seventh and eighth centuries. In the fourth century, as we may gather from the canons of the council of Laodicea, they had already trained singers in the churches of Syria, and St. Augustine speaks of the singing of St. Athanasius as if the latter must have had a careful schooling in the art. Silvia, the Gallic pilgrim, mentions the singing of antiphons and psalms in the church at Alexandria (385-88). In the fifth century, as we learn from a letter of Sidonius Apollinaris, Syrian cantors were used in Italian churches. The prejudice against Pagan music, which must have excluded all Greek or Græco-Roman influences from the Christian services of apostolic times, proved hard to kill. We find it cropping out even in Clement of Alexandria, who admits only 'modest and decent harmonies’ and excludes harmonies that are 'chromatic and light, such as are used in the lascivious orgies of courtesans.’ By that time, however, the prejudice apparently had become discriminating. The extraordinary popularity of the kitharœdic songs was bound to have its influence. The heresiarchs were not slow to recognize the hold of profane melodies on the people, and composed dogmatic chants to the melodies of popular songs, much in the manner of the Salvation Army of our day. Arius, for instance, the great heresiarch who was condemned by the council of Nicea (325), reproduced in his _Thalia_ the lascivious musical forms of the Ionian Sotades--to the great scandal of Athanasius. St. Ephraem (320-79), adopting the same idea, turned the Syrians from the songs of Harmonius by writing hymns in the Syrian language on the same melodies, and Gregory of Nazianza (328-89) composed canticles to take the place of the heterodox psalms of the Apollinarists.