In the Septuagint it is called Opiivoc, " Funeral-songs " or " Dirges," the usual rendering of Heb.
The only appropriate songs for many years have been funeral dirges.
Name-songs, written at the birth of a chief, gave his genealogy and the deeds of his ancestors; dirges and love-songs were common.
The untimely fate of Josiah became a stock allusion in dirges.
But it was rather in the chants and litanies of the ancient religion, such as those of the Salii and the Fratres Arvales, and the dirges for the dead (neniae), and in certain extemporaneous effusions, that some germs of a native poetry might have been detected; and finally in the use of Saturnian verse, a metre of pure native origin, which by its rapid and lively movement gave expression to the vivacity and quick apprehension of the Italian race.
