THE MODES OF ANCIENT GREEK MUSIC _MONRO_ London HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE AMEN CORNER, E.C. [Illustration] New York MACMILLAN & CO., 66, FIFTH AVENUE _The Modes of Ancient Greek Music_ BY D. B. MONRO, M.A. PROVOST OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD HONORARY DOCTOR OF LETTERS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1894 Oxford PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY DEDICATED TO THE PROVOST AND FELLOWS OF TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN [Greek: xeinosynês heneka] [Blank Page] PREFACE The present essay is the sequel of an article on Greek music which the author contributed to the new edition of _Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities_ (London, 1890-91, art. MUSICA). In that article the long-standing controversy regarding the nature of the ancient musical Modes was briefly noticed, and some reasons were given for dissenting from the views maintained by Westphal, and now very generally accepted. A full discussion of the subject would have taken up more space than was then at the author's disposal, and he accordingly proposed to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press to treat the question in a separate form. He has now to thank them for undertaking the publication of a work which is necessarily addressed to a very limited circle. The progress of the work has been more than once delayed by the accession of materials. Much of it was written before the author had the opportunity of studying two very interesting documents first made known in the course of last year in the _Bulletin de correspondance hellénique_ and the _Philologus_, viz. the so-called Seikelos inscription from Tralles, and a fragment of the _Orestes_ of Euripides. But a much greater surprise was in store. The book was nearly ready for publication last November, when the newspapers reported that the French scholars engaged in excavating on the site of Delphi had found several pieces of musical notation, in particular a hymn to Apollo dating from the third century B.C. As the known remains of Greek music were either miserably brief, or so late as hardly to belong to classical antiquity, it was thought best to wait for the publication of the new material. The French School of Athens must be congratulated upon the good fortune which has attended their enterprise, and also upon the excellent form in which its results have been placed, within a comparatively short time, at the service of students. The writer of these pages, it will be readily understood, had especial reason to be interested in the announcement of a discovery which might give an entirely new complexion to the whole argument. It will be for the reader to determine whether the main thesis of the book has gained or lost by the new evidence.