But the Athenians were not reduced to depend for amusement at table upon the invention of these humble companions. They knew how, when occasion required, to entertain themselves, and, in the exuberance of their hilarity, descended for this purpose to contrivances almost infantine. They posed each other with charades, enigmas, conundrums, and, sometimes, in the lower classes of society, related stories of witches, lamias, mormos, and other hobgoblins believed in by the vulgar of all nations. Among persons engaged in public affairs the excitement of political discussion was often, of course, intermingled with their more quiet pleasures.[818] But with this we have, just now, nothing to do, nor with the enigmas which we shall describe anon. There was another and more elegant practice observed by the Greeks at convivial meetings, which, though not peculiar to them, has nowhere else, perhaps, prevailed to the same extent,—I mean the introduction of music and the singing of songs,[819] light, graceful, and instinct with wit and gaiety, to the barbitos or the lyre. ----- Footnote 818: Aristoph. Aves. 1189, sqq. Footnote 819: Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 403. ----- Among the Greeks, generally, the love of music and poetry seemed to be a spontaneous impulse of nature. Almost every act of life was accompanied by a song,—the weaver at his loom, the baker at his kneading-trough, the reaper, the “spinners and the knitters in the sun,” the drawer of water, even the hard-working wight who toiled at the mill, had his peculiar song, by the chaunting of which he lightened his labour. The mariner, too, like the Venetian gondolier, sang at the oar, and the shepherd and the herdsman, the day-labourer and the swineherd, the vintager and the husbandman, the attendant in the baths, and the nurse beside the cradle. It might, in fact, be said, that from an Hellenic village music arose as from a brake in spring. Their sensibilities were tremblingly alive to pleasure. There was elasticity, there was balm in their atmosphere, and joy and freedom in their souls.—How could they do other than sing?