The daily life of the Greeks and Romans as illustrated in the classical collectionsMetropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
History
The daily life of the Greeks and Romans as illustrated in the classical collections
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
Art, Greek; Art, Roman; Greece -- Social life and customs; Rome -- Social life and customs
[Illustration: FIG. 90. APOLLO WITH A KITHARA]
The ancient flute differed from the modern in being played at the end,
and in having a vibrating reed as a mouthpiece. The tone was shrill.
Flutes were always played in pairs, and a kind of bandage was often worn
by the player to support their weight. This can be seen on the psykter
in Case 4 and on a terracotta statuette from Cyprus in Case 1. Flute
music had a very wide use. It accompanied the voice in solo or chorus,
and the kithara at public contests; it was employed in the theatre at
Athens and at Rome, and was used to guide and accompany the exercises
of the palaistra. The flute furnished music for dancers, and in Rome it
was played at funerals. Meals were served and work such as the kneading
of bread in bakeries was done to its music. Flute-cases are often
represented in interior scenes in Greek vase paintings, as on the inside
of a kylix in Case O in the Fourth Room, showing a boy playing the lyre,
and on a lekythos in Case K in that room where a woman is playing the
same instrument. Another instrument was the syrinx or Pan’s pipe, made
of reeds arranged in graduated lengths, fastened together with cords and
wax. It was especially the shepherd’s companion in his long, solitary
days with his flocks. The little faun which forms the pendant of the
bracelet in Case K 2 in the Seventh Room is playing the syrinx. Cymbals
were used principally at religious ceremonies of an orgiastic type. There
are two pairs in the collection, one being marked with the owner’s name,
Kallisthenia (Case 5 and Case C 2 in the Sixth Room). Dancing formed a
part of worship in ancient times. The rude clay groups of men and women
dancing in a ring illustrate a feature of the worship of Aphrodite in
Cyprus (Case 1). In Greece boys were taught the exercises preliminary
to a dancer’s training as a part of their physical education, and the
many public festivals gave opportunity for large numbers to progress
further. Professional dancers, both boys and girls, were employed to
furnish entertainment at symposia. On a kylix on the bottom of Case L
in the Fourth Room is a girl dancing and playing the castanets, while a
young man looks on (fig. 89). Women of good family danced at home for
amusement, and at domestic festivals. The character of Greek dancing was
largely mimetic, the movements of the arms and the use of the drapery
being very important (see tail-piece, p. 75). The terracotta dancers in
Case L in the Seventh Room and another in Case 1 are good illustrations
of this (figs. 91-92). The Romans in early times practised religious
dancing. The processions of the Salii or priests of Mars, and of the
Arval Brothers are the best-known examples of such ritual performances.
Dancing as an amusement, however, they adopted from the Greeks in its
period of decadence, and consequently the sterner moralists opposed it.
Under the early Empire it nevertheless grew very fashionable. Girls and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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