the guild of the "pipers" (collegium tibicinum, P. 202), whose true character as strolling musicians is evinced by their ancient privilege, maintained even in spite of the strictness of Roman police, of wandering through the streets at their annual festival, wearing masks and full of sweet wine. While dancing thus presents itself as an honourable function, and music as one subordinate but still necessary, and public corporations were therefore instituted for both of these, poetry appears rather as an incidental and, so to speak, uncalled for phenomenon, whether it may have come into existence by itself, or as an accompaniment to the movements of the dancers.
Religious chants. The earliest chant, in the view of the Romans, was that which the leaves sang to themselves in the green solitude of the forest. The whispers and pipings of the "favourable spirit" (Faunus, from favere) in the grove were repeated to men by the singer (vates)[errata 1], or by the songstress (casmena, carmenta) who had the gift of listening to him, with the accompaniment of the pipe, and in rhythmically measured language (casmen, afterwards carmen, from canere); and the names of several of these divinely inspired interpreters, above all that of an ancient seer and singer, Marcius, lingered long in the memory of posterity[errata 2]. Of a kindred nature to these soothsaying songs were the incantations properly so called, the formulæ for conjuring away diseases and other troubles, and the evil spells by which they prevented the rain and called down the lightning, or even enticed the seed from one field to another; only in these instances, probably from the very first, formulæ of mere sounds appear side by side with formulæ of words.[1] More firmly rooted in tradition and equally primitive were the religious litanies which were sung and danced by the Salii and other priesthoods, and the only one of which that has come down to us, a dance-chant of the Arval Brethren in honour of Mars, probably composed to be sung in alternate parts, well deserves a place here.
- ↑ Thus Cato the Elder (de R. R. 160), gives as potent against sprains the formula: hauat hauat hauat ista pista sista damia bodanna ustra, which was probably as obscure to its inventor as it is to us. Of course, along with these there were also formulæ of words; e. g. it was a remedy for gout, to think, while fasting, on some other person, and thrice nine times to utter the words, touching the earth at the same time and spitting:—"I am thinking of thee, mend my feet. Let the earth receive the ill, let health with me dwell" (terra pestem teneto, salus hic maneto. Varro de R. R. i. 2, 27).
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