The beginnings of poetry everywhere, perhaps, belong rather to women than to men; the spell of incantation and the chant for the dead pertain pre-eminently to the former, and not without reason the spirits of song, the Casmenae or Camenae and the Carmentis of Latium, like the Muses of Hellas, were conceived as feminine.

But the time came in Hellas, when the poet relieved the songstress and Apollo took his place at the head of the Muses.
In Latium there was no national god of song, and the older Latin language had no designation for the poet.( 15) The power of song emerging there was out of all proportion weaker, and was rapidly arrested in its growth.

The exercise of the fine arts was there early restricted, partly to women and children, partly to incorporated or unincorporated tradesmen.

We have already mentioned that funeral chants were sung by women and banquet-lays by boys; the religious litanies also were chiefly executed by children.

The musicians formed an incorporated, the dancers and the wailing women (-praeficae-) unincorporated, trades.