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
39. There were also some instruments besides those which were blown
into, and those which were used with different strings, which gave
forth only sounds of a simple nature, such as the castanets (κρέμβαλα),
which are mentioned by Dicæarchus, in his essay on the Manners and
Customs of Greece, where he says, that formerly certain instruments
were in very frequent use, in order to accompany women while dancing
and singing; and when any one touched these instruments with their
fingers they uttered a shrill sound. And he says that this is plainly
shown in the hymn to Diana, which begins thus—
Diana, now my mind will have me utter
A pleasing song in honour of your deity,
While this my comrade strikes with nimble hand
The well-gilt brazen-sounding castanets.
And Hermippus, in his play called The Gods, gives the word for rattling
the castanets, κρεμβαλίζειν, saying—
And beating down the limpets from the rocks,
They make a noise like castanets (κρεμβαλίζουσι).
[Sidenote: MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.]
But Didymus says, that some people, instead of the lyre, are in the
habit of striking oyster-shells and cockle-shells against one another,
and by these means contrive to play a tune in time to the dancers, as
Aristophanes also intimates in his Frogs.[88]
40. But Artemon, in the first book of his treatise on the Dionysian
System, as he calls it, says that Timotheus the Milesian appears
to many men to have used an instrument of more strings than were
necessary, namely, the magadis, on which account he was chastised by
the Lacedæmonians as having corrupted the ancient music. And when
some one was going to cut away the superfluous strings from his lyre,
he showed them a little statue of Apollo which they had, which held
in its hand a lyre with an equal number of strings, and which was
tuned in the same manner; and so he was acquitted. But Douris, in his
treatise on Tragedy, says that the magadis was named after Magodis, who
was a Thracian by birth. But Apollodorus, in his Reply to the Letter
of Aristocles, says—"That which we now call ψαλτήριον is the same
instrument which was formerly called magadis; but that which used to
be called the clepsiambus, and the triangle, and the elymus, and the
nine-string, have fallen into comparative disuse." And Alcman says—
And put away the magadis.
And Sophocles, in his Thamyras, says—
And well-compacted lyres and magadides,
And other highly-polish'd instruments,
From which the Greeks do wake the sweetest sounds.
But Telestes, in his dithyrambic poem, called Hymenæus, says that
the magadis was an instrument with five strings, using the following
expressions—
And each a different strain awakens,—
One struck the loud horn-sounding magadis,
And in the fivefold number of tight strings
Moved his hand to and fro most rapidly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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