Cf. Dion Chrysost. i. 263. Footnote 1121: Jul. Scalig. Poet. i. 20, p. 78, seq. Footnote 1122: Athen. iv. 75. Pignor. de Serv. p. 88, seq. Vitruv. ix. 9. ----- Of stringed-instruments the most common was the lyre,[1123] manufactured from many kinds of fine wood, and sometimes of ivory.[1124] The bridge was usually of ilex.[1125] The cithara,[1126] introduced at Athens by Phrynis,[1127] was made sometimes of horn with wooden pegs,[1128] though mention occurs of one formed entirely of solid gold, adorned with figures in relief of the Muses, Orpheus, and Apollo, and thickly studded with emeralds and other precious stones.[1129] The magadis,[1130] sometimes reckoned among wind-instruments, was unquestionably stringed, since we find Timotheus, accused at Sparta of innovating in the number of its chords, pointing out to his accuser an ancient statue of Apollo, in which the god was represented playing on a magadis with an equal number.[1131] In proof of its antiquity it may be remarked, that Lesbothemis, a sculptor, who flourished in a remote age at Mytilene, where this instrument was always in high favour,[1132] represented one of the Muses with the magadis in her hand. The pectis, said to have been an invention of Sappho, and by some confounded with the magadis, ought rather perhaps to be regarded as a modification of that instrument.[1133] The epigoneion, so called from its inventor Epigonos, by birth an Ambraciot, though afterwards made a citizen of Sicyon, was a kind of harp with forty strings, resembling, probably, those many-chorded instruments represented on the monuments of Egypt and Ethiopia. This Epigonos, is said to have been the first person who in playing dispensed with the use of the plectron.[1134] The ancient Arabs forestalled Signor Paganini, and drew a world of sweet sounds from an instrument of one chord:[1135] the Assyrians had their pandoura, with three strings.[1136] Among the Scythians was found the pentachordon, stringed with thongs of raw bull-hide, and played on by a plectron of goat’s hoof. The Libyans, more especially the Troglodytes, filled their caverns with the music of the psithura, otherwise called the ascaron, an instrument a cubit square, which produced sounds resembling the tinkling of castanets. Cantharos attributes its invention to the Thracians. To these we may add the drum, the tambourine,[1137] with cymbals, and castanets, sometimes of brass, and sometimes of shells, played on by women in honour of Artemis. ----- Footnote 1123: A rude species of lyre is still in use in Asia Minor. Chandler, Travels, &c., i. 149. Footnote 1124: Athen. xv. 50. Herod. iv. 192. Footnote 1125: Theoph. Hist. Plant. v. 7. 6. Footnote 1126: Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 574. Footnote 1127: Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 958. Footnote 1128: Luc. adv. Indoct. § 10. Footnote 1129: Id. § 8. Footnote 1130: Athen. iv. 35. Poll. iv. 61. Anab. vii. 3. Meur. Lect. Att. iv. 20. Footnote 1131: Athen. xiv. 40.