Be satiate, O fierce Mars, be satiate!
Leap o’er the threshold! Halt! now beat the ground!
Call to your aid the heroes all, call in alternate strain;
Call, call the heroes all.
Call to your aid the heroes all, call in alternate strain.
Help us, O Marmar, help us, Marmar, help us!
Bound high in solemn measure, bound and bound again,
Bound high and bound again![[624]]
Refrain and iteration are here in thrall to religious ceremony, and the priest has laid hands upon the rough material of the throng; but the throng is present, takes part,—even if, in later time, by deputies,—and invention is at a minimum, appearing only in its regulative, and not in its originating force. It is easy to see how question and answer, strophe and antistrophe, are simply a development and division out of the crowd with one voice, as in the Greek chorus. So, too, in an Assyrian hymn:[[625]]—
Who is sublime in the skies?