Stringed Instruments--The Lyre--The Cithara--Wind Instruments--The Flute--Trumpets, Tambourines, and other Instruments--Dancing as a Popular Amusement--The Dance in Religious Ceremonies. We do not intend in this place to discuss the history and theory of ancient music, but only to supplement what has been said already about the musical instruction of youth, by indicating the most important branches of music which were studied in Greece and describing the instruments in use. We shall pass over vocal music entirely, since it played no great part in antiquity apart from instrumental accompaniment, and its chief purpose was for song and the drama. The commonest instruments in ordinary use were stringed. These were well suited for solo-playing as well as for accompanying songs, and the singer could accompany himself with them, which would have been impossible in the case of wind instruments. The stringed instruments used in Greece were all played by striking or thrumming, and not by means of a bow; in fact, it is a disputed point whether the ancients, and in particular the Egyptians, were at all acquainted with the bow; in any case we do not find it in classical antiquity. Among the various kinds of stringed instruments which had either existed in Greece since the oldest times or been introduced from foreign countries, especially from the East or from Egypt, there were only two which were of special importance for educational and ordinary purposes. These were the lyre and the cithara, which were closely related to one another, and only distinguished by the effect of the sound. Of these the simpler, and probably also the older, was the lyre, which, according to a Greek legend, was an invention of Hermes, who constructed the first lyre out of a tortoise, which he used as a sounding-board, stretching cords across it. Even in later times tortoise-shells seem to have been actually used in the construction of lyres, and on works of art, especially vase pictures (compare the “Bowl of Duris,” which represents school teaching in Attica, Fig. 75), we can plainly distinguish the markings of the tortoise on the outer side of the instrument. It must, however, have been more usual to construct the sounding-board of wood, and only adorn it externally with tortoise-shell or other decorative materials; the writers mention boxwood and ilex as the principal materials for lyres, as well as ivory, which last was probably used for decorative purposes. In the Homeric hymn to Hermes, in which the invention of the lyre by the god is described in detail, Hermes cuts little stems of reed, which he fastens into the shell in gridiron fashion and covers with ox-skin, and by this means obtains the necessary covering for the sounding-board. In later times the proceeding was probably different, since the usual material for the sounding-board was undoubtedly wood, and the covering was, no doubt, made of wood also. But