The peoples of ancient Greece surrounded themselves with music; they immersed themselves in music; they were in fact imbued with music. Scarcely any social or human function, whether public or private, urban or rural, took place without its musical accompaniment. Marriages, banquets, harvestings, funerals – all had their distinctive cadences. Boatmen rowed to the song of the aulos (the double-reed oboe-like wind instrument), gymnasts exercised to music's pulse, the spirits of soldiers were sustained by its rhythmic lilt as they marched off to battle. Instrumental music accompanied libations, sacrifices, supplications, religious processions, and ceremonial rites of all sort. Musical contests drew throngs of knowing listeners. Singer-composers, who set great numbers of poetic texts to song, which they then performed from memory to the accompaniment of wind and stringed instruments, were esteemed as repositories of knowledge. Solo instrumentalists could stand as high in the public's estimation as any athlete returning victorious from the Pan-hellenic games. In Attic tragedy, the recurring motifs of the choral song not only unified the action on stage, but served also the same virtuoso function as the divisions in a modern aria da capo. In Attic comedy, the joy of life was celebrated in the ecstatic outpourings of licentious song, the chorus encircled by dancers whirling in the drunken revelry of the lascivious kordax (a deliberately vulgar and at times indecent dance). In sum, music was for the Greeks more, indeed, much more than a pleasant preoccupation or source of amusement. It was a significant part of life itself. That this was so is because the ancient Greek language was itself a form of melodious expression.