Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, or Pythagoric Life: Accompanied by Fragments of the Ethical Writings of certain Pythagoreans in the Doric dialect; and a collection of Pythagoric Sentences from Stobaeus and others, which are omitted by Gale in his Opuscula Mythologica, and have not been noticed by any editorIamblichus
Philosophy
Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, or Pythagoric Life: Accompanied by Fragments of the Ethical Writings of certain Pythagoreans in the Doric dialect; and a collection of Pythagoric Sentences from Stobaeus and others, which are omitted by Gale in his Opuscula Mythologica, and have not been noticed by any editor
Iamblichus
Ethics, Ancient; Philosophers -- Greece -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient; Pythagoras; Pythagoras and Pythagorean school
Employing this method, therefore, as a basis, and as it were an
infallible rule, he afterwards extended the experiment to various
instruments; viz. to the pulsation of patellæ or pans, to pipes and
reeds, to monochords, triangles, and the like. And in all these he found
an immutable concord with the ratio of numbers. But he denominated the
sound which participates of the number 6 _hypate_: that which
participates of the number 8 and is sesquitertian, _mese_; that which
participates of the number 9, but is more acute by a tone than mese, he
called _paramese_, and _epogdous_; but that which participates of the
dodecad, _nete_. Having also filled up the middle spaces with analogous
sounds according to the diatonic genus, he formed an octochord from
symphonious numbers, viz. from the double, the sesquialter, the
sesquitertian, and from the difference of these, the epogdous. And thus
he discovered the [harmonic] progression, which tends by a certain
physical necessity from the most grave [i. e. flat] to the most acute
sound, according to this diatonic genus. For from the diatonic, he
rendered the chromatic and enharmonic genus perspicuous, as we shall
some time or other show when we treat of music. This diatonic genus,
however, appears to have such physical gradations and progressions as
the following; viz. a semitone, a tone, and then a tone; and this is the
diatessaron, being a system consisting of two tones, and of what is
called a semitone. Afterwards, another tone being assumed, viz. the one
which is intermediate, the diapente is produced, which is a system
consisting of three tones and a semitone. In the next place to this is
the system of a semitone, a tone, and a tone, forming another
diatessaron, i. e. another sesquitertian ratio. So that in the more
ancient heptachord indeed, all the sounds, from the most grave, which
are with respect to each other fourths, produce every where with each
other the symphony diatessaron; the semitone receiving by transition,
the first, middle, and third place, according to the tetrachord. In the
Pythagoric octachord, however, which by conjunction is a system of the
tetrachord and pentachord, but if disjoined is a system of two
tetrachords separated from each other, the progression is from the most
grave sound. Hence all the sounds that are by their distance from each
other fifths, produce with each other the symphony diapente; the
semitone successively proceeding into four places, viz. the first,
second, third, and fourth. After this manner, therefore, it is said that
music was discovered by Pythagoras. And having reduced it to a system,
he delivered it to his disciples as subservient to every thing that is
most beautiful.[29]
CHAP. XXVII.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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