The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 3 (of 3)Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Philosophy
The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Civilization, Greco-Roman; Dinners and dining -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality -- Greece
Now the pectis and the magadis are the same instrument, as Aristoxenus
tells us, and Menæchmus the Sicyonian too, in his treatise on
Artists. And this last author says that Sappho, who is more ancient
than Anacreon, was the first person to use the pectis. Now, that
Terpander is more ancient than Anacreon, is evident from the following
considerations:—Terpander was the first man who ever got the victory
at the Carnean[86] games, as Hellanicus tells us in the verses in which
he has celebrated the victors at the Carnea, and also in the formal
catalogue which he gives us of them. But the first establishment of the
Carnea took place in the twenty-sixth Olympiad, as Sosibius tells us in
his essay on Dates. But Hieronymus, in his treatise on Harp-players,
which is the subject of the fifth of his Treatises on Poets, says
that Terpander was a contemporary of Lycurgus the lawgiver, who, it
is agreed by all men, was, with Iphitus of Elis, the author of that
establishment of the Olympic games from which the first Olympiad is
reckoned. But Euphorion, in his treatise on the Isthmian Games, says
that the instruments with many strings are altered only in their names;
but that the use of them is very ancient.
38. However, Diogenes the tragic poet represents the pectis as
differing from the magadis; for in the Semele he says—
And now I hear the turban-wearing women,
Votaries of th' Asiatic Cybele,
The wealthy Phrygians' daughters, loudly sounding
With drums, and rhombs, and brazen-clashing cymbals,
Their hands in concert striking on each other,
Pour forth a wise and healing hymn to the gods.
Likewise the Lydian and the Bactrian maids
Who dwell beside the Halys, loudly worship
The Tmolian goddess Artemis, who loves
The laurel shade of the thick leafy grove,
Striking the clear three-corner'd pectis, and
Raising responsive airs upon the magadis,
While flutes in Persian manner neatly join'd
Accompany the chorus.
And Phillis the Delian, in the second book of his treatise on Music,
also asserts that the pectis is different from the magadis. And his
words are these—"There are the phœnices, the pectides, the magadides,
the sambucæ, the iambycæ, the triangles, the clepsiambi, the scindapsi,
the nine-string." For, he says that "the lyre to which they sang
iambics, they called the iambyca, and the instrument to which they sang
them in such a manner as to vary the metre a little, they called the
clepsiambus,[87] while the magadis was an instrument uttering a diapason
sound, and equally in tune for every portion of the singers. And
besides these there were instruments of other kinds also; for there was
the barbitos, or barmus, and many others, some with strings, and some
with sounding-boards."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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