Three primitive musical modes were employed by the Greek poets, in the earliest times of which later authors could find any account,—the Lydian, which was the most acute,—the Dorian, which was the most grave,—and the Phrygian, intermediate between the two; the highest note of the Lydian being one tone higher, that of the Dorian one tone lower, than the highest note of the Phrygian scale.[397] Such were the three modes or scales, each including only a tetrachord, upon which the earliest Greek masters worked: many other scales, both higher and lower, were subsequently added. It thus appears that the earliest Greek music was, in large proportion, borrowed from Phrygia and Lydia: and when we consider that, in the eighth and seventh centuries before the Christian era, music and poetry conjoined—often also with dancing or rhythmical gesticulation—was the only intellectual manifestation known among the Greeks,—and moreover that, in the belief of all the ancient writers, every musical mode had its own peculiar emotional influences, powerfully modified the temper of hearers, and was intimately connected with the national worship,—we shall see that this transmission of the musical modes implies much both of communication and interchange between the Asiatic Greeks and the indigenous population of the continent. Now the fact of communication between the Ionic and Æolic Greeks, and their eastern neighbors, the Lydians, is easy to comprehend generally, though we have no details as to the way in which it took place; but we do not distinctly see where it was that the Greeks came so much into contact with the Phrygians except in the region of Ida, the Troad, and the southern coast of the Propontis. To this region belonged those early Phrygian musicians (under the heroic names of Olympus, Hyagnis, Marsyas), from whom the Greeks borrowed.[398] And we may remark that the analogy between Thracians and Phrygians seems partially to hold in respect both to music and religion, since the old mythe in the Iliad, wherein the Thracian bard Thamyris, rashly contending in song with the Muses, is conquered, blinded, and stripped of his art, seems to be the prototype of the very similar story respecting the contention of Apollo with the Phrygian Marsyas,[399]—the cithara against the flute; while the Phrygian Midas is farther characterized as the religious disciple of Thracian Orpheus. [397] See the learned and valuable Dissertation of Boeckh, De Metris Pindari, iii, 8, pp. 235-239. [398] Plutarch, De Musicâ, c. 5, 7, p. 1132; Aristoxenus ap. Athenæ. xiv, p. 624; Alkman, Frag. 104, ed. Bergk. Aristoxenus seems to have considered the Phrygian Olympus as the great inventive genius who gave the start to Grecian music (Plutarch, _ib._ pp. 1135-1141): his music was employed almost entirely for hymns to the gods, religious worship, the Mêtrôa, or ceremonies, in honor of the Great Mother (p. 1140). Compare Clemen. Alexand. Strom. i, p. 306.