We have already adverted to the gradual decline in the use of the Greek language at Rome and the incidental passing from the minds and the memories of men of the alphabetical system of notation which had been inherited from the Greeks. It is not quite clear, however, how the Oriental church, which used Greek until a comparatively late period and even introduced that language into the liturgy of the Latin church, could have absolutely ignored the Greek system of notation. Yet such appears to be the case. As far as we can discover, the early chants of the church, both in the East and in the West, were handed down _viva voce_, and not until about the eighth century do we find traces of any attempt to devise a system of graphic aids to musical memory. This system, as we first find it, was of a most elementary sort and consisted merely of a few strokes and dashes placed above the text of the song and serving apparently no other purpose than to indicate in a general way the rising and falling inflections of the melody. These signs are known as _neumes_, and from them gradually developed our modern system of notation. The origin of the _neumes_ is quite obscure. It would appear that at first they consisted merely of the acute and grave accents borrowed from the Byzantine grammarians and designed to indicate the occurrence of a rising and falling inflection respectively. To them were gradually added dashes, strokes, curves, and hooks in various combinations which in time became a fairly complete and precise system of musical writing. Their evolution into the square and diamond-shaped Gothic notation of the middle ages can be followed with sufficient clearness. [Illustration: SPECIMEN OF NOTATION IN NEUMES, TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURY.] These signs, though representing definite turns and embellishments in the melody, gave no exact indication of pitch. The first sign of anything approaching a staff occurs in the tenth century, when one or two lines were drawn across the page to mark the place of certain tones or pitches. The first line was used for the tone F and the second for the tone C. Other lines were later added for the other tones, and each line was marked with the letter of the tone to which it was assigned. Though all the letters of the scale were used in this fashion, F, C, and G were the ones most commonly employed and from the Gothic characters for these were developed our modern clef signs, as may be seen from the following illustration: [Illustration: GENESIS OF CLEFS FROM GOTHIC LETTERS.]