The extant specimens of Greek music are mostly of the second century A.D., and therefore nearly contemporary with Ptolemy. The most considerable are the melodies of three lyrical pieces or hymns, viz. (1) a hymn to Calliope, (2) a hymn to Apollo (or Helios),--both ascribed to a certain Dionysius,--and (3) a hymn to Nemesis, ascribed to Mesomedes[2]. Besides these there are (4) some short instrumental passages or exercises given by Bellermann's _Anonymus_ (pp. 94-96). And quite recently the list has been increased by (5) an inscription discovered by Mr. W. M. Ramsay, which gives a musical setting of four short gnomic sentences, and (6) a papyrus fragment (now in the collection of the Arch-duke Rainer) of the music of a chorus in the _Orestes_ of Euripides. These two last additions to our scanty stock of Greek music are set out and discussed by Dr. Wessely of Vienna and M. Ruelle in the _Revue des Études Grecques_ (V. 1892, pp. 265-280), also by Dr. Otto Crusius in the _Philologus_, Vol. LII, pp. 160-200[1]. [Footnote 2: It seems needless to set out these melodies here. The first satisfactory edition of them is that of Bellermann, _Die Hymnen des Dionysius und Mesomedes_ (Berlin, 1840). They are given by Westphal in his _Musik des griechischen Alterthumes_ (1883), and by Gevaert, _Musique de l'Antiquité_, vol. i. pp. 445 ff.; also in Mr. W. Chappell's _History of Music_ (London, 1874), where the melodies of the first and third hymns will be found harmonised by the late Sir George Macfarren. The melody published by Kircher (_Musurgia_, i. p. 541) as a fragment of the first Pythian ode of Pindar has no attestation, and is generally regarded as a forgery.] The music of the three hymns is noted in the Lydian key (answering to the modern scale with one [symbol: flat]). The melody of the second hymn is of the compass of an octave, the notes being those of the Perfect System from Parhypatê Hypatôn to Tritê Diezeugmenôn (_f - f_ with one [symbol: flat]). The first employs the same octave with a lower note added, viz. Hypatê Hypatôn (_e_): the third adds the next higher note, Paranêtê Diezeugmenôn (_g_). Thus the Lydian key may be said, in the case of the second hymn, and less exactly in the case of the two others, to give the Lydian or _c_-species of the octave in the most convenient part of the scale; just as on Ptolemy's system of Modes we should expect it to do. This octave, however, represents merely the _compass_ (_ambitus_ or _tessitura_) of the melody: it has nothing to do with its _tonality_. In the first two hymns, as Bellermann pointed out, the key-note is the Hypatê Mesôn; and the mode--in the modern sense of that word--is that of the octave _e - e_ (the Dorian mode of Helmholtz's theory). In the third hymn the key-note appears to be the Lichanos Mesôn, so that the mode is that of _g-g_, viz. the Hypo-phrygian. [Footnote 1: Of the discovery made at Delphi, after most of this book was in type, I hope to say something in the _Appendix_.]