(M36) The legend which made Apollo the friend of Cinyras(176) may be based on a belief in their common devotion to the lyre. But what function, we may ask, did string music perform in the Greek and the Semitic ritual? Did it serve to rouse the human mouthpiece of the god to prophetic ecstasy? or did it merely ban goblins and demons from the holy places and the holy service, drawing as it were around the worshippers a magic circle within which no evil thing might intrude? In short, did it aim at summoning good or banishing evil spirits? was its object inspiration or exorcism? The examples drawn from the lives or legends of Elisha and David prove that with the Hebrews the music of the lyre might be used for either purpose; for while Elisha employed it to tune himself to the prophetic pitch, David resorted to it for the sake of exorcising the foul fiend from Saul. With the Greeks, on the other hand, in historical times, it does not appear that string music served as a means of inducing the condition of trance or ecstasy in the human mouthpieces of Apollo and the other oracular gods; on the contrary, its sobering and composing influence, as contrasted with the exciting influence of flute music, is the aspect which chiefly impressed the Greek mind.(177) The religious or, at all events, the superstitious man might naturally ascribe the mental composure wrought by grave, sweet music to a riddance of evil spirits, in short to exorcism; and in harmony with this view, Pindar, speaking of the lyre, says that all things hateful to Zeus in earth and sea tremble at the sound of music.(178) Yet the association of the lyre with the legendary prophet Orpheus as well as with the oracular god Apollo seems to hint that in early days its strains may have been employed by the Greeks, as they certainly were by the Hebrews, to bring on that state of mental exaltation in which the thick-coming fancies of the visionary are regarded as divine communications.(179) Which of these two functions of music, the positive or the negative, the inspiring or the protective, predominated in the religion of Adonis we cannot say; perhaps the two were not clearly distinguished in the minds of his worshippers.