The dates of the vases of the best period, all are included between 440 and 330 B.C.; some earlier, also showing these flutes, date back fifty years more. Thousands of these recovered vases are distributed in museums and private collections, and have been of inestimable value for the insight they have afforded into the domestic life of the Greek people. Aristophanes in one of his comedies, written about 450 B.C., makes a bit of satire out of these flutes, causing Micas and another to say—comically complaining of their master—“Let us weep and wail like two flutes breathing some air of Olympos.” All that their poets and other writers told us of their flutes and flute-players fails to come home to our understanding until associated with these enduring pictures; and we know at least that _they_ are genuine records, and that time has allowed no hand to tamper with them. It is evident that flute music exercised a fascinating influence over these people; the player is present alike in scenes of mirth and revelry, in solemn ceremonials and in funeral procession; and yet we are so far away in thought culture and sentiment, that we are unable to imagine what that music was that it could give such delight, and be accounted one of life’s chiefest luxuries. Here, beyond question, we have the testimony of the eye that it was so; and we know that the natural laws of sounding pipes are the same to-day as yesterday, and the limits of capability of four or six holes allowed but a very narrow range for melody. The player was called by the Etruscans “Subulone”: by the Greeks “Auletris” and the flutes known as “Auloi.” The pipes were formed of boxwood, lotus wood and sycamore. Was it on these double flutes that Lamia played and so ’witched the world that it built a temple to her, and paid divine honours to her name? Were these the flutes spoken of as being able to play in three modes, the famed flutes, the invention of Pronomus the Theban? The date given of Pronomus is given as about 440 B.C., and is that of the period of these vases. [Illustration: _The Satyr’s Hands and Flutes._ _Fig. 16._]