C 733 3 
nomi took their rife j of which there is, in the dia- 
logue of Plutarch, an ample account. As what I 
am now advancing cannot but be well known, I 
need look no farther for the proof of it, than to a 
paflage of Plato’s third book of laws, where he com- 
plains of a licence beginning even in his time to the 
prejudice of the fcience. Speaking of times paft, 
Our inufic (fays he) was then divided according 
to certain fpecies, and figures thereof. Prayers to 
the gods were one fpecies of fong, to which they 
gave the name of hymns: 6ppofed to this was an- 
other fpecies, which, in particular, might be called 
threnij another, paeones; and another, the birth of 
Dionyfius, which I hold to be the dithyrambus : 
there were alfo citharoedic nomi, fo called, as being 
Itill another fong. Thefe, and fome others, being 
prefcribed, it was not allowable to ufe one fpecies of 
melos for another. But afterwards, in procefs of 
time, the poets fil'd: introduced an unlearned licence, 
being poetic by nature, but unfkilled in the rules of 
the fcience, trampling upon its laws, over attentive 
to pleafe, mixing the threni with the hymns, and 
the paeones with the dithyrambi, imitating the mufic 
of the flute upon the cithara, and confounding all 
things with all, &c. (18). 
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