43 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



So too Rameses II is glorified in "the heroic poem of the priest 

 Pentaur." In the eighteenth dynasty we see the two functions 

 united. 



'' An unknown poet, out of the number of the holy fathers, felt himself 

 inspired to sing in measured words the glory of the king [Thutmes III], and 

 the might and grandeur of the god Amon." 

 And then we have the acts, wholly priestly, of 

 "the nobleman who bore the dignity of 'prophet of the Pyramid of 

 Pharaoh.' This officer's duty was to praise the memory of the deceased 

 king, and to devote the god-like image of the sovereign to enduring remem- 

 brance." 



Still better and more abundant evidence is furnished by ac- 

 counts of the early Greeks. The incipient poet, as eulogizer of the 

 god, is priestly in his character and at first is an official priest. 

 Concerning the Greeks of rude times Muir writes " Hence, in 

 their traditions, the character of poet is usually found to combine 

 those of musiciau, priest, prophet, and sage ;" and he adds that 

 The mythical poet Olen " ranks as the earliest and most illustrious priest 

 and poet of the Delian Apollo . . . Bceo, a celebrated priestess of that sanc- 

 tuary [the Delphic], pronounces him ... to be, not only the most antient 

 of Apollo's prophets, but of all poets." 



We are told by Mahaffy that " the poems attributed to these men 

 [poets prior to Homer] . . . were all strictly religious." 

 "The hexameter verse was commonly attributed to the Delphic priests, who 

 were said to have invented and used it in oracles. In other words, it was 

 early used in religious poetry . . . There is no doubt that the priests did 

 compose such works [long poems] for the purpose of teaching the attributes 

 and adventures of the gods. Thus epic poetry [was at first] purely reli- 

 gious . . . Homer and Hesiod represent the close of a long epoch. " 

 And that their poetry arose by differentiation from sacred poetry, 

 is implied in his further remark that in Homer's time, " the wars 

 and adventures, and passions of men, had become the center of in- 

 terest among the poets." This partially secularized poetry at a 

 later date became further secularized, while it became further dif- 

 ferentiated from music. The hymn of the primitive priest-poet 

 was uttered to the accompaniment of his four-stringed lyre, in a 

 voice more sonorous than ordinary speech not in song, as we 

 understand it, but in recitative ; and, as Dr. Monro argues, a vague 

 recitative a recitative akin to the intoning of the liturgy by our 

 own priests, and to the exalted utterance spontaneously fallen into 

 under religious excitement.* But in course of time, this quasi- 



* In his learned work, The Modes of Ancient Greek Music, he writes : " Several indica- 

 tions combine to make it probable that singing and speaking were not so widely separated 

 from each other in Greek as in the modern languages with which we are most familiar." 

 (p. 113) . . . 



..." For if the language even in its colloquial form had qualities of rhythm and into- 

 nation which gave it this peculiar half-musical character, so that singing and speaking were 



