could be tuned without the other strings being affected. We have no further details about this construction. On the vase painting represented in Fig. 136, which presents a number of women with musical instruments, perhaps Muses, one is leaning back comfortably in her easy-chair, and playing on the lyre, here represented with six strings; the woman standing in front of her seems about to tune the strings of her cithara. The cithara differed from the lyre chiefly in the form and structure of the sounding-board. This was constructed of wood, often artistically decorated and adorned with valuable materials, precious stones, etc., and was much larger and more arched than the sounding-board of the lyre. It usually had a straight base, and sometimes sounding holes, which was less often the case with the lyre, and its arms were far wider and squarer, and, being also hollow, seem to have helped to strengthen the sound. On some [Illustration: PL. LXXXVI FIG. 136.] instruments it is clear that the sounding-board and the arms which rise out of it were constructed out of a single piece, and that, consequently, the cavities are in connection; on some the arms are of a different colour from the sounding-board, usually white, which would suggest ivory; still, we must not on this account conclude that they were constructed separately, since it is possible that the different colouring was only an external ornamentation or veneer for the arms, and need not lead us to assume a different material for the whole structure. The arms were usually slightly curved outwards, but turned inwards again at the top. The instrument in Fig. 136 is one of the simplest, since the arms are quite plain; on other examples we often see elaborate carving. The bridge which unites the two arms is either a perfectly simple rod, as in the case of the lyre (compare Fig. 136), or else the arms have at their projecting ends solid handles or crooks, which probably assisted the tuning. The number of strings was originally limited in the cithara; seven was at first the usual number, and this number was even fixed by law at Sparta, but in other places nine, ten, or eleven strings were used. The writers and pictures give us no more accurate information about the mode in which these strings were fastened to the yoke and to the sounding-board than they do about the lyre; the pictures dating from the Roman period are much clearer in that respect, but we cannot safely use them as authorities.