Rome differed from Greece in having its poetry and music written by different authors, while in Greece both words and notes emanated from the same brain. But even among men the Romans possessed no important composers. The names of those who wrote music to the plays of Terence and Plautus (the plays themselves being imitations of the Greek) are known to history, but the composers possessed no position of consequence. If the men received no great homage, there must have been little incentive for women to strive in the musical field. As in Greece, female slaves played a large part in the world of art,--with this difference, that in Rome the masters were usually on a lower plane of cultivation than their own slaves. Dancing was an adjunct to music, though often practised as a separate branch of entertainment, and brought to a high state of perfection in its pantomimic form. The position of woman in the far East was inferior even to her station in Greece and Rome. In China, for example, everything feminine was held in contempt. This had its influence on the musical system of the Chinese, according to one of their legends. After the invention of music, the formation of various instruments, and the composition of many songs, all due to more or less mythical emperors, Hoang-Ti, who reigned about the year 2600 B. C., decided to have the art scientifically investigated and its rules formulated. In his day music was practised, but not understood in its natural elements. The emperor therefore ordered Ling-Lun to look into the matter. This dignitary, about whose work many anecdotes exist, travelled to Northwestern China, and took up his abode on a high mountain, near a bamboo grove. On cutting a stalk and excavating the pith between two of the joints, he found that the tube gave the exact pitch of the normal human voice, and also the sound given by the waters of the Hoang-Ho, which had its source near the scene. Thus was discovered the fundamental tone of the scale. Meanwhile, the Foang-Hoang, or sacred bird of Chinese mythology, appeared with its mate and perched upon a neighbouring tree. The male bird sang a scale of several tones, while the female sang another composed of different tones. The first note of the male bird coincided in pitch with Ling-Lun's bamboo tube, and by cutting other tubes the erudite investigator proceeded to reproduce all the tones of both. By combining these, he was able to form a complete chromatic scale. But, owing to the prejudice against the weaker sex, the tones of the female (called feminine tones even to-day) were discarded in favour of those of the male bird. The latter, the basis of Chinese music, correspond to the black keys of our piano, while the former were equivalent to the white, or diatonic, notes of our scale.