But with respect to their cultivation of music and its influence on their national character, we have upon record the full and explicit testimony of one of their most distinguished citizens, the historian Polybius, whose remarks will appear especially deserving of the reader’s attention, when it is considered, that he must himself have gone through the whole course of discipline and instruction which he describes. Having had occasion to mention the turbulent character as well as the cruel and perfidious conduct of the Cynætheans, who occupied a city and district in the north of Arcadia, he proposes to inquire why it was that, although they were indeed Arcadians, they had acted in a manner so entirely at variance with the usual habits and manners of the Greeks, and he then proceeds with earnestness and solemnity to explain upon the following principles the cause of this extraordinary contrast. It was, as he states, that the Cynætheans were the only inhabitants of Arcadia who had neglected to exercise themselves in music; and he then gives the following account of the established practice of the rest of the Arcadians in devoting themselves to the study of _real_ music, by which he means the united arts of music, poetry, and dancing, of all those elegant and graceful performances, over which the Muses were supposed to preside. He informs us that the Arcadians, whose general habits were very severe, were required by law to go on improving themselves in music, so understood, until their thirtieth year. “In childhood,” says he, “they are taught to sing in tune hymns and pæans in honor of the domestic heroes and divinities. They afterwards learn the music of Philoxenus and Timotheus. They dance to the pipe in the theatres at the annual festival of Bacchus; and they do this with great emulation, the boys performing mock-fights adapted to their age, and the young men the so-called manly fights. In like manner throughout the whole of life their pleasure at feasts and entertainments consists, not in listening to singers hired for the purpose, but in singing themselves in their turns when called upon. For, although a man may decline any other performance on the ground of inability and may thereby bring no imputation on himself, no one can refuse to sing, because all have been obliged to learn it, and to refuse to take a part, when able, is deemed disgraceful. The young men also unite together to perform in order all the military steps and motions to the sound of the pipe, and at the public expense they exhibit them every year before their fellow-citizens. Besides these ballets, marches, and mock-fights, the men and women unite in great public assemblies and in numerous sacrifices, to which are to be added the circular or choral dances by the boys and virgins.” Polybius adds, that these musical exercises had been ordained as the means of communicating softness and refinement to the otherwise rough and laborious life of the Arcadians, and he warns