II. We at present know of no musician whatever, who, by the use of his art, can excite, or appease a violent passion; but if various authors do not deceive us, the music of antiquity, produced both the one and the other of these effects. It is related of the two musicians, Timotheus and Antigenides, that they could, whenever they pleased, enrage Alexander to such a pitch, as to make him seize on his arms, and fall into such excesses of fury, as terrified the by-standers, and filled them with apprehensions that their lives were in danger. They tell us also of a trumpeter of Megara, named Herodotus, who perceiving the strength and endeavours of the soldiers of Demetrius, insufficient to move a warlike machine of enormous weight towards the walls of Argos, which they were then besieging, he, by blowing two trumpets at a time, so inspired them, that they found their vigour in a manner doubled, and themselves enabled to conduct the machine to the place they wished. They tell us likewise, of a remarkable flute-player, who was a Milesian, that by touching in the Phrygian mode enraged certain men, and by changing to the Doric from the Phrygian, immediately calmed them again. Of the famous musician Terpandro, they relate, that with his lyre, he stifled the flame of a sedition among the Lacedæmonians; and of Empedocles, that he also with his lyre, disarmed a youth of his choler, who was on the point of committing a parricide. I shall omit many other cases of this kind. III. If it appears wonderful, that the antient music should have inflamed, and calmed violent passions, it seems more so, that it should have been made use of to cure various diseases; and sometimes, not only in here and there an individual, but even in a whole kingdom; for Plutarch says, that Thaletas, a native of Crete, with the energetic sweetness of the lyre, freed the Lacedæmonians from a plague; and it may be gathered from various authors, that antiently, they used music for the cure of fevers, the falling-sickness, the epilepsy, deafness, the sciatica, and the bite of a viper. IV. But to tell you the truth, I think these facts should not pass current without some critical examination. And first of all, none of the authors who testify these extraordinary instances of the power of music over the passions, speak of them, as transactions they had been eye-witnesses of, or as things that they knew from their own experience. All the facts cited, are much anterior to the author by whom they are handed down to us; so that it seems very probable, the information came to them by tradition, or proceeded from some popular rumour unworthy of all credit. In matters that favour of the marvellous, both with respect to natural, and præter-natural things, nobody is ignorant how many fables have been delivered down to us in the writings of the ancients.