Chapter 1
1These are far from the only sources available to us, as will become clear. The compendious On Music of Aristides Quintilianus, from somewhere between the first and third centuries AD, and the treatize of the same title falsely ascribed to Plutarch, probably from the late second century AD, will appear frequently in these pages, as will a range of other works.
2This is a quotation from Pericles’ famous ‘Funeral Oration,’ a speech he gave to commemorate those who had died in the first year of the Peloponnesian War (in the winter of 431–430 BC). The words are recorded – not verbatim, but with probable accuracy in the major outlines and ideas – by the historian Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War Book II, Chapter 38.
3This inscription can be found described and translated in Daniel David Luckenbill’s Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1926), Volume 2, p. 38.
4This quotation is taken from a composition of Pindar’s of which only a little bit has survived on a scrap of mutilated papyrus – in the scholarly catalogue of Pindar’s works, it is known as Fragment 125.
5Sappho is often referred to this way in what is called the Palatine Anthology (sometimes abbreviated as AP), a collection of ancient Greek verse compiled over the years and assembled in one manuscript by Constantine Cephalas in the tenth century AD (later altered slightly to become the Greek Anthology). See, for example, Book 7, Poem 14; Book 9, Poem 66; and Book 9, Poem 571.
6Sappho’s work comes down to us in fragments; this one survives because it is quoted in a commentary by the fifth-century-AD philosopher Syrianus. It is traditionally numbered as Fragment 105(a) as in the standard English edition of Edgar Lobel and Denys Page.
7This information comes from Hellanicus, who kept a record of oral tradition and local history on Lesbos in the fifth century BC. He is quoted by Athenaeus, a man of letters who lived during the second and third centuries AD.
8This is what we learn in a biography of the Archaic Spartan lawmaker Lycurgus, written by Plutarch, a first-century-AD essayist (Chapter 28, Sections 4–5).
9See Thucydides, History Book 5, Chapter 70; Aulus Gelllius, Attic Nights Book 1, Chapter 11, Sections 1–4.
10An official script, sometimes called the ‘Peisistratean (or Peisistratid) recension,’ would have been an easy way to keep everyone singing the same words – there are various accounts of such a thing in, for example, ancient biographies (‘Lives’) of Homer, and in the second-century-AD Description of Greece by Pausanias (Book 7, Chapter 26, Section 13).
11See the records about Lasus in On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury by Martianus Capella (who reached his peak activity in the early 400s AD), Book 9, Section 936, and in the massive tenth-century Byzantine encyclopaedia called the Suda under the entry for ‘Lasus.’
Chapter 2
1One version of this myth can be found in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, which is a narrative poem in the style and metre of Homer (but composed later than Homer).
2This story is recorded by Plutarch in his Customs of the Spartans, p. 238c.
3This story can be found in Plutarch too (Agis 10.6; Customs of the Spartans 238c), as well as in a work On the Fundamentals of Music by the philosopher Boethius (1.1), and The Learned Banqueters by Athenaeus (p. 628b).
4See Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters 14.616e–617e and Aristotle’s Politics 1341a–2b.
5See Republic 399d.
6See Politics 1341a–b and compare Plato’s Symposium 215b–c.
7See, for example, Plato’s Laws 700a–b and Aristotle’s Politics 1341a.
8This anecdote is recorded in Athenaeus 616e–617b.
9This story is retold in Book 1, lines 688–711 of the epic poem Metamorphoses by Ovid. Ovid lived from 43 BC to 17 AD. His complicated and sexually explicit poetry has made him an object both of fascination and censure in the ancient and modern world.
10Scholars have learned details about the workings of the hydraulis from various comments and images preserved in the work of a first-century-BC architect Vitruvius, On Architecture (Book 10, Chapter 8), in the Pneumatica of the first-century-AD Alexandrian Hero (Book 1, Chapter 42), and in the Natural History of the first-century-AD Roman Pliny the Elder (Book 7, Chapter 125), among others.
11This is from Book 2 of Horace’s Epistles, Poem 1, line 156.
Chapter 3
1This moment happens at Symposium 176e; for more on the topic, see also Section 9 of another Symposium by a contemporary of Socrates and Plato, Xenophon. Compare also Aristotle’s Politics 1339b, in which the philosopher quotes the Archaic poet Mousaios to back up his claim that ‘at their gatherings and pastimes, people bring along music because it can warm their hearts.’
2See especially Sections 1–3, 7, and 9 of Xenophon’s Symposium, and compare lines 1177–78 of Euripides’ play, Ion.
3See On Music Book 2, Chapter 3 – a similar observation is made by the first-century-BC philosopher, Philodemus of Gadara, in his fragmentary work On Music (Book 4, column 132 in Daniel Delattre’s edition).
4There are all sorts of references to this kind of trumpeting in the ancient world: for starters, see Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War Book 5, Chapter 70, Xenophon’s Anabasis 4.3.29–32, and Aristides Quintilianus’s On Music Book 2, Chapter 6.
5This is from Aristophanes’ Frogs, lines 354–57.
6These can be found in Aristophanes’ Birds, lines 159–61, and Peace, lines 868–70. See also the First Oration by the later rhetorician Himerius (315–386 AD).
7So says Aristotle in Poetics 1449a.
8Parodies of tragedy are to be found, for example, in Thesmophoriazousae 39–69, 95–174. Similarly, the competition between Aeschylus and Euripides in Frogs must have contained elaborate mimicry of each playwright’s style.
9This is another one of our musical documents: it is a papyrus catalogued as Pap. Leiden Inv. P. 510.
Chapter 4
1See Plato’s Republic 376e and Timaeus 88c.
2See Deipnosophists 631b–c. Military training, too, overlapped with dance in the form of the pyrrhichē.
3For expressions of this kind of disdain about overly musical men, see not only Aristotle’s Politics 1341a–b but also Homer’s Iliad 3.54 and Plato’s Republic Book 3, 410d.
4Plutarch, Alcibiades 2.4–5.
5On the process of selecting boys for these performances, see pseudo-Aristotle’s Constitution of the Athenians Chapter 56.
6See especially Laws 700e–701b.
7See, for example, Homer’s Iliad 18.490–96.
8Most of this comes from Chapter 14 of Plutarch’s Lycurgus.
9This statement is in Aristotle’s Politics 1339b.
10See Plato’s Republic Book 10, 595a and Laws Book 2, 670–74.
11This comes from Pollux’s Onomasticon, Book 9, Section 41. See also the Institutes of Oratory by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (Quintilian) who taught rhetoric in first-century-AD Rome (Book 1, Chapter 10, Sections 17–18).
Chapter 5
1Plato, Republic Book 4, 424c.
2These Aristoxenean views are preserved particularly well in pseudo-Plutarch’s On Music (see especially 1144a–b).
3Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Book 2, 1103a.
4Diogenes’ work is partially preserved by an Epicurean scholar, Philodemus of Gadara, in a very damaged papyrus known as the De Musica – see ‘further reading.’
5For a few versions of this story, see ‘further reading.’
6Hibeh Papyrus I.13, lines 13–17 – an English translation is available in Andrew Barker’s Greek Musical Writings volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 183–85.
7See Aristotle, Poetics Chapter 4, 1448b; Aeschylus, Libation Bearers line 564; Aristophanes, Frogs lines 108–15.
8Plato, Republic Book 3, 393d.
9Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Literary Composition Chapter 11, lines 73–119.
10See Plato, Laws Book 1, 644–45 and Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Book 3, 1116a.
11Homer, Iliad 3.54.
12Aeschylus, Persians 388–95.
13Plutarch, Life of Pericles Chapter 4.
14Aristides Quintilianus, De Musica 62.20–24.
15Homer, Iliad Book 16, lines 740–42.
Chapter 6
1This quotation is taken from a large edition which collects the remaining fragments of those ‘Pre-Socratic’ philosophers. Because the edition was compiled by Hermann Alexander Diels and revized by Walther Kranz, the fragments are numbered according to what are called ‘Diels-Kranz (DK) numbers.’ This particular fragment is DK 44 B4 (from Stobaeus’ Anthology 1.21 7a).
2Andrew Barker (Greek Musical Writings Volume 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 29) notes aptly that the existence of the harmonikoi ‘dispel[s] the impression that musical theory in [the fifth century] was a Pythagorean monopoly.’ His excerpts from the fragments of Archytas (as quoted in Porphyry’s Commentary on Ptolemy’s Harmonics, esp. Sections 56–57) are particularly revealing in this regard: they demonstrate minute attention to the structure, functioning, and material exigencies of instruments and those who use them. Archytas’ work is proof that ancient theory and practice did not need to be antithetical to one another, no matter how often they in fact were.
3See also Phaedo 86b and Aristotle’s De Anima 407b27, 1340b18.
4This is Book 6 of Cicero’s Republic (the ‘Dream of Scipio’), Sections 18–19.
5The actual mathematics of tuning had changed somewhat by Kepler’s day, meaning that he used not the Pythagorean tunings but a new set of geometric ratios that conformed more precisely to the physical realities at stake.
6See Phaedrus 246a.
Chapter 7
1In reality, Greek theorists tended to describe their scales from top to bottom. For simplicity’s sake, however, this chapter follows the modern convention of starting with low notes and moving up to higher notes.
2This information is recorded on pp. 1137–40 of a treatize by a later author (called ‘pseudo-Plutarch’) from the second or third century AD. But many scholars believe that pseudo-Plutarch cites authentic ideas from earlier authors, including Aristoxenus himself (who may have helped record some of the early Greek music history about figures like Terpander).
3There are two famous inscriptions from a Cretan town called Priansos, recorded in the compendium called Inscriptiones Creticae (1.24.7–9), which shows that by the third century Timotheus was numbered among the artists whose music counted as old standards and cherished classics.
4We should definitely take these stories with a grain of salt. They come from a biography of Euripides by a philosopher and historian called Satyrus, who lived around the third century BC and whose work survives on a papyrus from a trash heap in the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus (papyrus number 1176). Later on the biographer and essayist Plutarch would tell similar stories in his Moralia, p. 795d. It’s more likely that these were tall tales invented to record the closeness between Euripides’ and Timotheus’ work, than that they were factually accurate recountings of actual collaboration.
Chapter 8
1Discussions of these ideas and their implications are to be found in Plato’s Republic, Book 3, 398d (and another dialogue, the Gorgias at 501d–2b), as well as Aristotle’s Poetics Chapter 1, 1447a and pseudo-Plutarch On Music 1144a–b.
2Much of our most useful information on rhythm is found in Aristides’ On Music Book 1, Chapters 13–19, which attempt to systematize comprehensively the many kinds of rhythm that were theoretically possible in the Greek system. This particular claim, about the iambic dactyl, can be found in Chapter 17. See further the ‘Some Further Reading’ section at the end of this chapter.
3This term is used, for example, in the remaining fragments of Aristoxenus’ lost work on rhythm, the Elements of Rhythm (Section 11) and in Aristides Quintilianus’ On Music Book 1, Chapter 19.
4Aristoxenus, apparently, was already complaining in his day that the subtler nuances of small intervals were becoming difficult or impossible for the layman to hear because they were being less commonly used: see pseudo-Plutarch, On Music 1145a4–b6.
Chapter 9
1This is from Book 2, line 620 of Lucretius’ poem.
2This passage can be found at lines 202–20 of the Ars.
3See Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 3 of the Tusculan Disputations.