In whatever way we decide on the metaphysics of the matter, certain it is that in old times music was an universal accomplishment in most parts of Greece; but this was when it was little more than the chanting of savages, in which, however ignorant, any one may join. Exactly in proportion as it rose into an art its cultivators diminished in number, until, when a high degree of perfection had been attained, it was abandoned almost wholly to professional musicians. The Athenians had been commanded by the Pythian oracle to chant chorically in the streets, a divine service in honour of Bacchos.[914] At Sparta similar performances took place during the gymnopædia, when choruses of naked men and boys, with crowns of palm leaves on their heads, proceeded through the streets singing the songs of Thaletas and Alcman and the pæans of Dionysidotos.[915] Mr. Müller, who loves to complete or round off the accounts he finds in ancient authors, says that, _doubtless_, a large portion of the inhabitants of the city took part in these exhibitions. Perhaps they did, but we have no authority for such a supposition. The place in the agora which contained statues of Apollo, Artemis and Leto, was called _Choros_,[916] because there the Ephebi danced in choruses in honour of Apollo. On these occasions unwarlike persons were sometimes thrust into the least honourable places,[917] while bachelors were excluded; so that, as Schneider has well remarked, cowardice was less dishonourable than celibacy. But it does not at all appear that the Spartans themselves were ever good musicians, though they were not incapable of relishing good music;[918] and hence the foreign musicians who flocked thither found a welcome reception. The developement of the warlike constitution of the state threw the favourable side of their discipline into the shade.[919] Footnote 914: Demosth. in Mid. § 15. Footnote 915: Athen. xv. 22. Footnote 916: Paus. iii. 11. 9.—Müller, ii. 341., supposes the whole agora may have been thus denominated. Footnote 917: Xen. de Rep. Lac. ix. 5. Plut. Lycurg. § 15. Footnote 918: Aristot. Pol. viii. 5. Footnote 919: Cf. Müll. Dor. ii. 342.