12. From this view of the subject we may explain the singular story of the contest of Apollo with Linus, and of the defeat and consequent death of the latter.(1433) For this purpose it will be necessary to state shortly my ideas respecting the real character of Linus. Linus, then, the subject of the song called by his name, was originally a god of an elementary religion (in which there were numerous symbols to signify the death of all animated life): he was nearly connected with Narcissus (_i.e._, _the Torpid_), whose tomb was shown at Thebes and Argos, at which last place matrons and maidens bewailed him in the month Arneius, as a boy brought up among lambs and torn in pieces by dogs.(1434) The song of lamentation for the untimely death of Linus, the much-loved boy,(1435) was sung to the harp in a low and subdued voice, and listened to with pleasure in the times of Homer and Hesiod,(1436) although then, perhaps, the air was not always very melancholy. But in after times this was its predominant character, as is proved by the names Αἴλινος and Οἰτόλινος.(1437) It was a great favourite with the husbandmen,(1438) who were generally aboriginal inhabitants. In this point there was a resemblance between the usages of ancient Greece and Asia Minor, where religious dirges of this description, different, indeed, in different districts, but having every where the same mournful tune, were customary.(1439) Such were, for instance, the lament of the tribe of Doliones;(1440) the Hylas, sung at fountains in the country of the Mysians and Bithynians(1441) (probably the same as the Mysian song);(1442) the song of the beautiful Bormus, whose watery death was deplored by the husbandmen of Mariandyne on the flute in the middle of summer;(1443) of Lityerses, whom the Phrygians bewailed yearly during the time of harvest at Celænæ, the native place of Marsyas;(1444) and which, with the melancholy Carian strain, was played to the Phrygian flute.(1445) Besides these there were the Gingras, or song of Adonis, and the Maneros, the rustic song of Pelusium in Egypt, which Herodotus compares with the Linus.(1446) And even at Cyprus the contest of the two opposite kinds of music was in some measure renewed; there being a tradition that Cinyras, the priest of Aphrodite, and composer of the mournful strains in honour of Adonis, had, like Marsyas and Linus, been overcome and put to death by Apollo.(1447) Thus we behold Apollo the representative of the severe, even, and simple music of the Greeks, in contest with that impassioned spirit, alternating between the extremes of fury and apathy, which the professors of an elementary religion sought to represent even in their music; and consequently this fable also harmonizes with the fundamental principles of the religion of Apollo. 13. Having now ascertained the general character of the music employed in the worship of Apollo, we shall endeavour to obtain a more accurate knowledge of its varieties.