Vincenzo Galilei, father of the great astronomer and mathematician, Galileo Galilei, was the first to publish three ancient Greek hymns with their music, in his Dialogo delta Musica Antica e Moderna, at Florence, in 1581. They were copied from a Greek manuscript that was then in the library of Cardinal St. Angelo, at Rome.

A second Greek manuscript, which included the same hymns, was found among the papers of Archbishop Usher, in Ireland, after his decease, and was bought by Bernard, a Fellow of St. John's College, who took it to Oxford. The hymns were printed from that manuscript, under the editorship of the Rev. Edward Chilmead of Christ Church, at the end of the Greek edition of the astronomical poems of Aratus, published by the University in 1672.

During the seventeenth century there was great earnestness among the learned at Oxford in reviving ancient Greek literature, including that of music. When Mark Meibom, or Meybaum, (in Latin, Meibomius,) undertook to edit a collection of the works of Greek authors upon music, and to publish them at Antwerp, he received most hearty encouragement and assistance from eminent members of the University, and particularly from Selden, from Patrick Young (who had been librarian to James I. and Charles I.,) and from Gerard Langbaine, Provost of Queen's College, and keeper of the Archives of the University. They lent, or procured for him, the loan of valuable Greek manuscripts from private libraries, and both Selden and Gerard Langbaine copied and compared transcripts; the latter collating with the best of the numerous Greek manuscripts in the libraries of the University.