The lyre held by Terpsichore (_Fig. 61_), shews a variation in construction, it has below the cross-bar a second bar which would seem in itself to be intended to define more strictly the lengths of the strings when the peg carrying the series were fixed in its correct position, but an examining the larger lyre or Psaltery (_Fig. 63_) carried by Erato, “the lovely one,” as the Greeks called this muse, this addition will be seen to assume a more important relation, and the appearance is as of platform attached to the crossbar through which the strings are threaded, and they do not pass to wind round the bar. This platform is more or less a puzzle. It might be designed to throw the strings more forward of the body of the instrument; Erato’s lyre is curved evidently with that purpose in view. Many representations shew this little platform. I have noticed instances of the loose ends of strings shewn above it, although the rule seems to have been for those ends to be at the bottom of the lyre where the tuning of each string was regulated. Erato’s lyre is of advanced pattern, being hollow like a violin, and doubtless it was of high sonority. In the gem room of the British Museum there is another painting from Herculanæum, in which a new idea is manifest; the platform is replaced by levers at right angles to the bar to which the strings are attached. M. Victor Mahillon gives a rough drawing of this, but it is hardly convincing as to how such levers or rollers can be brought into use. I have brooded over this painting, searched it intently with opera glasses, seeking time and again to read its mystery, and still it is clouded in mist, the actual construction not to be made out. There are several illustrations of lyres having a number of loose rings upon the bar; Dr. Burney gives one where one long string is threaded through a series of them from top to bottom of lyre. But the idea is an impossible one for practical validity, since the tension could not be regulated to differ for each note, and the string being continuous from one to the other, to affect one note would be to affect all. Rings and loops on the bar are often seen, details of strings being omitted, and there is doubt how much the painter knew of the instrument he presumed to depict; modern artists shew themselves equally presumptuous, seldom or never caring to know or to enquire into the mode of playing, or to understand the design of the construction. Some little light, I think, is given in a description of an ancient lyre which, in a mutilated state, was recovered by Lord Elgin from a tomb at Athens.