Dictionary
PHANOCLES	100.00%
A Greek elegiac poet of the Alexandrine period. He celebrated in erotic elegies the loves of beautiful boys. A considerable fragment remaining describes the love of Orpheus for Calais, the beautiful son of Boreas, and his death ensuing there from. The language is simple and spirited, and the versification melodions.
MUSAEUS	81.51%
HERMESIANAX	75.66%
of Colophon in Ionia; a, Greek elegiac poet, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, about 330 B.C., and was a scholar and friend of Philetas. He composed erotic elegies in the style of those by his compatriot Antimachus. The three books containing his compositions he entitled Leontion, after his mistress. A fragment of ninety-eight lines of the third book has been preserved, in which love-stories of poets and wise men from Orpheus down to Philetas are treated in a rather unconnected manner, but not without spirit.
ONOMACRITUS	72.22%
An Athenian, who lived at the court of Pisistratus and his sons. At the request of Pisistratus, he prepared an edition of the Homeric poems. He was an industrious collector, and also a forger of old oracles and poems. Those which go under the name of Orpheus are regarded as, for the most part, concocted by himself. He was detected in forging an oracle of Mus'us, and banished from Athens by the Pisistratid'; but he was afterwards reconciled to them, and in their interest induced Xerxes, by alleged oracular responses, to decide upon his war with Greece [Herodotus, viii 6].
MYSTERIES	64.36%
SIRENS	53.21%
The virgin daughters of Phorcys, according to later legend of Achelous and one of the Muses. In Homer there are two, in later writers three, called Ligeia, Leukosia, and Parthenope, or Aglaopheme, Molpe, and Theloeiepeia. Homer describes them as dwelling between Circe'sisle and Scylla, on an island, where they sit in a flowery meadow, surrounded by the mouldering bones of men, and with their sweet song allure and infatuate those that sail by. Whoever listens to their song and draws near them never again beholds wife and child. They know everything that happens on earth. When Odysseus sailed past, lie had stopped up the ears of his companions with wax, while he had made them bind him to the mast, that he might hear their song without danger [Od xii 41-54,153-200]. Orpheus protected the Argonauts from their spell by his own singing [Apollonius Rhodius, iv 903]. As they were only to live till some one had sailed past unmoved by their song, they cast themselves into the sea, on account either of Odysseus or of Orpheus, and were changed to sunken rocks. When the adventures of Odysseus came to be localised on the Italian and Sicilian shore, the seat of the Sirens was transferred to the neighbourhood of Naples and Sorrento, to the three rocky and uninhabited islets called the Sirenusae [the Sirenum scopuli of Vergil, Aen. v 864; cp. Statius, Silvae ii 2, 1], or to Capri, or to the Sicilian promontory of Pelorum. There they were said to have settled, after vainly searching the whole earth for the lost Persephone, their former playmate in the meadows by the Achelous; and later legend also assigned this as the time when they in part assumed a winged shape. They were represented as great birds with the heads of women, or with the upper part of the body like that of a woman, with the legs of birds, and with or without wings (see cut). At a later period they were sometimes regarded as retaining their original character of fair and cruel tempters and deceivers. But they are more generally represented as singers of the dirge for the dead, and they were hence frequently placed as an ornament on tombs; or as symbols of the magic of beauty, eloquence, and song, on which account their sculptured forms were seen on the funeral monuments of fair women and girls, and, of orators and poets: for instance, on those of Isocrates and Sophocles. [Such a Siren may be seen, beating her breast and tearing her hair, above the stele of Aristion in the Street of Tombs at Athens. The National Museum at Athens contains several examples of stone Sirens, not as reliefs, but as separate figures "in the round"; and a funeral monument of this type maybe noticed on a vase in the British Museum (Cat. C. 29), where the Siren is standing on a pillar and playing the lyre. Cp. Euripides, Hel. 169; Anthologia Palatina vii 710 and 481; with Miss Harrison's Myths of the Odyssey, pp. 146-182, and Mythology and Monuments of Athens, pp. 582-5.1
ARISTAEUS	51.85%
A beneficent deity worshipped in various parts of Greece, especially in Thessaly, Boeotia, the African colony of Cyrene, and the Islands of Ceos, Corcyra, Sicily and Sardinia. He gives his blessing to herds, hunting, bee-keeping, wine, oil and every kind of husbandry. In particular he defends men, animals and plants from the destructive heat of the dog-days. According to the story most in vogue, he is the son of Apollo by the Thessalian nymph Cyrene, whom the god carried off to the country named after her. She is the daughter of Hypseus, and granddaughter (another story says daughter) of the river-god Peneus. After his birth Hermes took Aristaeus to the Hours and Gaea, the goddess of the earth, who brought him up and made him an immortal god. Sometimes he is called the son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth). In the Theban legend he and Autonoe the daughter of Cadmus are represented as the parents of Actaeon. He brought destruction upon the nymph Eurydice, the beloved of Orpheus; for in fleeing from his persecutions she was killed by a snake. [Vergil, Georg. iv 316-558.]
VENATIONES	32.89%
LYRIC POETRY	15.38%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 While among the Greeks elegiac and iambic poetry (q.v.), which forms the transition from epic to lyric composition, was practised by the Ionians, lyric poetry proper, or, as it was more commonly called, melic poetry (melos, a song), viz. the song accompanied by music, was cultivated by the Aeolians and Dorians. This is due to the talent for music peculiar to these races. That playing on stringed instruments and singing were cultivated even in mythical times in Aeolia, in the island of Lesbos, is shown by the legend that the head and lyre of Orpheus, who had been torn to pieces by Thracian women, were washed ashore on that island, and that the head was buried in the Lesbian town of Antissa. Antissa was the native place of TERPANDER, who gave artistic form to the nomos (q.v.), or hymn to Apollo, by elaborating the laws of its composition. Settling at Sparta in B.C. 676 he laid down the foundation of Dorian music. While he had closely followed Homeric poetry in the texts which he wrote for his musical compositions, there afterwards arose a greater variety in the kinds of songs, corresponding to the greater variety of musical forms, springing from the foundation laid by him. In the Aeolian lyric the pathetic prevails, as might be expected from the passionate nature of the people; the feelings of love and hatred, joy and sorrow are their principal themes. As to the metrical form we find short lines with a soft, melodious rhythm, which make up a small number of short strophes. They are written in the Aeolic dialect; we may suppose that they were solos sung to the accompaniment of stringed instruments. In Lesbos the Aeolian lyric was brought to its highest perfection by ALCAeUS of Mytilene (about 600), and by his contemporary SAPPHO, also a Lesbian, and teacher of the poetess ERINNA. The joyous poems of ANACREON of Teos (born about 550), whose subjects are love and wine, were also in the Aeolian style, but in the Ionic dialect. An echo of the Aeoliau lyric are the scolia (q.v.). It was among the Dorians, however, that the lyric poetry of the Greeks reached the highest degree of its development. It is also called choral lyric, because the Dorian songs were intended to be sung at the public festivals, especially those of the gods, by a dancing choir to the accompaniment of stringed instruments and flutes. Intended therefore to be public, it naturally had on the whole an earnest, objective character, and is thus distinguished from the Aeolian lyrics that expressed the personal feelings of the poet. Their form shows further points of difference. Instead of the diminutive Aeolian strophes of short lines, unsuitable for dancing, the Dorian lyrics have ampler strophes, usually with longer lines, and the combination of strophes is again subdivided into strophe, antistrophe, and epode, of which the first two are exactly parallel, while the last differs from both in its structure. While the number of the Aeolian metres is fixed, every Dorian song has its own metre, the rhythm of which depends on the tune suitable to the subject. As to the kinds of songs we also find great variety in the Dorian lyric: there are paeans, hyporchemata, hymns, prosodia, parthenia, dithyrambs, encomia, epinicia, hymeaea, epithalamia, threnoi (q.v.); drinking songs and love songs are also not wanting. They are written in the old epic dialect, influenced by Doric. With regard to their historical development: ALCMAN (about 660), a Lydian who had become a citizen of Sparta, was the first to compose longer and more varied poems on the lines laid down by Terpander and his school. The Dorian lyric received its later artistic form from the Sicilian STESICHORUS of Himera (about 600), whose contemporary ARION first gave a place in literature to the dithyramb. (See DITHYRAMBOS.) In the 6th century choral poetry became the common property of all Greeks, and so flourished more and more. Of its older representatives we have still to mention IBYCUS of Rhegium (about 540), in whose choral songs the erotic element prevails. This class of poetry was brought to its greatest perfection at the time of the Persian Wars by SIMONIDES of Ceos, by his nephew, BACCHYLIDES, and above all by PINDAR of Thebes. Besides these TIMOCREON of Ialysus, and the poetesses MYRTIS, CORINNA, PRAXILLA, and TELESILLA deserve mention. Of the productions of Aeolian and Dorian lyric poetry only fragments have been preserved, except the epinician odes of Pindar. With the Romans, the first attempts to imitate the forms of the Greek "melic" date from the last years of the Republic. LAeVIUS wrote mythological poems in a great variety of metres, the Erotopaegnia ("Diversions of Love"), which however seem to have attracted little attention. CATULLUS also wrote some poems in "melic" measures. This kind of poetry was perfected in the age of Augustus by HORACE, who introduced the forms of Aeolian lyric. None of the succeeding poets were of even secondary importance, in spite of the great skill with which they handled the various melic metres; one of them, the Christian poet PRUDENTIUS, wrote as late as the 4th century. The Dorian lyric never obtained a footing among the Romans.
MUSIC	14.71%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 included among the Greeks everything that belonged to a higher intellectual and artistic education. [Plato in his Republic, p. 136, while discussing education, says: "Can we find any better than the old-fashioned sort, gymnastic for the body and music for the soul?" and adds: "When you speak of music, do you rank literature under music or not?" "Ido."] Music in the narrower sense was regarded by the Greeks not only as an agreeable amusement, but also as one of the most effective means of cultivating the feelings and the character. The great importance they attached to music is also shown by their idea that it was of divine origin; Hermes or Apollo were said to have invented the lyre, Athene the simple flute Pan the shepherd's pipe. Besides these gods and the Muses, Dionysus also was connected with music. Numerous myths, as for instance those concerning Amphion and Orpheus, tell of its mighty power, and testify to the Greeks having cultivated music at a very early epoch. It was always intimately allied to poetry. Originally, epic poems were also sung to the accompaniment of the cithara, and the old heroes of poetry, such as Orpheus and Musaeus, are at the same time heroes of music, just as in historical times the lyric and dramatic poets were at the same time the composers of their works. It was not until the Alexandrian times that the poet ceased to be also a musician. Owing to its connexion with poetry, music developed in the same proportion, and flourished at the same period,, as lyric and dramatic poetry. Of the Greek races, the Dorians and Aeolians had a special genius and capacity for music, and among both we find the first traces of its development as an art. The actual foundation of the classical music of the Greeks is ascribed to TERPANDER (q.v.), of the Aeolian island of Lesbos, who, in Dorian Sparta (about B.c. 675) first gave a truly artistic form to song accompanied by the cithara or citharodice, and especially to the citharodic nomos (q.v.). In the Peloponnesian school of the Terapandridce, who followed his teaching and formed a closely united guild, citharodice received its further artistic development. What Terpander had done for citharodice was done not long afterwards by CLONAS of Thebes or Tegea for aulodice, or song accompanied by the flute. The artistic flute-playing which had been elaborated by the Phrygian OLYMPUS in Asia, was introduced by Clonas into the Peloponnesus, which long remained the principal seat of all musical art. Of the two kinds of independent instrumental music, which throughout presupposes the development of vocal music and always adapts itself to this as its model, the earlier is the music on the flute, aulitice, which was especially brought into favourable notice by SACADAS of Argos (about B.C. 580), while the music on stringed instruments, citharistice, is later. Music was much promoted by the contests at the public festivals, above all, by those at the Pythian games. Its highest point of development was attained in the time of the Persian Wars, which seems to have seen the completion of the ancient system as it had been elaborated by the tradition of the schools. The lyric poets of this time, as Pindar and Simonides, the dramatists, as Phrynichus and Aeschylus, were hold by the critics to be unsurpassable models. What was added in subsequent times can hardly be called a new development of the art. Athens in her golden age was the central city where professional musicians met one another,-Athens the home of Greek dramatic poetry. At this time vocal, combined with instrumental, music largely prevailed over instrumental music alone. The latter was chiefly limited to solo performances. Ancient vocal music is distinguished in one important point from ours: throughout classical times part-singing was unknown, and there was at most a difference of octaves, and that only when men and boys sang in the same choir. Again, in classical times, the music was subordinate to the words, and was therefore necessarily much simpler than it is now. It is only in this way that we can explain the fact that an ancient audience could follow the musical representation of the often intricate language of the odes, even when the odes were sung by the whole choir. Critics regarded it as a decline of art, when, at the end of the Peloponnesian War, the music began to be the important element instead of the poetry. This change took place at first in single branches of the art, as in the solos (monodice) in tragedy, and in the dithyrambic choruses. Thenceforward ancient music, like modern music, raised itself more and more to a free and independent position beside that of poetry. The first place among the various kinds of music was assigned to the indigenous citharodice, which was connected with the first development of the musical art; and indeed stringed instruments were always more esteemed than wind instruments, in part on account of the greater technical difficulties which had to be overcome, and which led to musicians giving particular attention to them. Moreover, playing on the flute was limited to certain occasions, as its sound seemed to the ancients to arouse enthusiasm and passion [Aristotle, Politics, viii 3]. There is evidence that, on the one hand, the ancient theory of singing and of instrumentation (in spite of the primitive nature of the instruments) was brought to a high degree of perfection; and that, on the other hand, the public must have possessed a severely critical judgment in matters of music. The characteristic feature of ancient music is the great clearness of its form, resulting, above all, from the extreme precision of the rhythmic treatment. [In ancient Greece there were certain kinds or forms of music, which were known by national or tribal names, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Ionian, and Aeolian. Of these the Dorian and Phrygian are regarded by Plato as representing the mean in respect of pitch, while the highest varieties of the Lydian (called Mixo-lydian and Syntono-lydian) are contrasted with the Ionian and with the lower variety of the Lydian (afterwards known as Hypo-lydian), the last two being described as "slack," or low in pitch (Republic, p. 398, and Aristotle, Politics, viii 5 and 7). Each of these was regarded as expressive of a particular feeling. Thus, the Dorian was deemed appropriate to earnest and warlike melodies; the Phrygian was exciting and emotional; the Mixo-lydian pathetic and plaintive. The Aeolian was intermediate between the high-pitched Lydian and the low-pitched Ionian (Athenaeus, p. 624 e, f, and 526 The terms Ionian and Aeolian fell out of use, and the following names were generally applied to seven forms of music, beginning with the highest in pitch and ending with the lowest:-Mixo-lydian, Lydian, Phrygian, Dorian, Hypo-lydian, Hypo-phrygian, and Hypo-dorian. These seven forms were known as harmonice (harmonia meaning literally a "fitting" or "adjustment," hence the "tuning" of a series of notes, or the formation of a "scale"). They were afterwards known as tonoi, or tropoi, the Latin modi and our moods or "modes." But the term "modes" is ambiguous. According to some authorities (Westphal and his followers) the ancient "modes" differed from one another as the modern major mode differs from the minor, namely in the order in which the intervals follow one another, the difference in the "modes" thus depending on the place of the semi-tones in the octave. Others suppose that the terms Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and the rest, were applied to different scales of the same "mode" in the modern sense of the term. Thus, Mr. D. B. Monro, in his Modes of Ancient Greek Music, 1894, maintains that, in the earlier periods of Greek music, (1) there is no distinction between "modes" (harmonice) and "keys" (tonoi or tropoi); and (2) that the musical scales denoted by these terms were primarily distinguished by difference of pitch (p. 101). To the passages quoted by Mr. Monro, from Plutarch (De Mutica, cc. 6, 8,15-17, 19), in support of the identity of the Greek "modes" and "keys" may be added Plutarch, de E apud Delphos, c. 10, where the "keys" (tonoi) are regarded as synonymous with the "modes" (harmonice).] As the basis of every melodic series of sounds the ancients had the tetrachord, a scale of four notes, to which according to tradition the earliest music was limited. The heptachord consisted of two tetrachords the central note was at once the highest of the first and the lowest of the second tetrachord. The heptachord was certainy in use before Terpander, who is said to have given to the lyre seven strings instead of four. [Strabo, p. 618. He really increased the compass of the scale from the two conjunct tetrachords of the seven-stringed lyre to a full octave, without increasing the number of the strings. This he did by adding one more string at the upper end of the scale, and taking away the next string but one. Aristotle, Problems, xix 32.] Thus arose the octachord or octave, and at last, after various additions, the following scale of notes was formed: From the lowest b onwards, this scale was divided into tetrachords in such a way that the fourth note was always also regarded as the first of the following tetrachord; [the intervals between the sounds of the tetrachord were, in ascending order, semi-tone, tone, tone]. This sequence was called the diatonic genus. Besides this there was also the chromatic, the tetrachords of which were as follows, b c d e e f g a [the intervals in this case were semi-tone, semi-tone, tone and a half]. Thirdly there was the enharmonic, the tetrachord of which [had for its intervals 1/4 tone, 1/4 tone, 2 tones, and accordingly] cannot be expressed in modern notation. [See also p, 707.] With regard to the musical instruments it may be mentioned that only stringed instruments (cp. especially CITHARA and LYRA) and the flute (q.v.), which closely resembled our clarionet, were employed in music proper; and that the other instruments, such as trumpets (see SALPINX), Pan's pipes (see SYRINX), cymbals (cymbala), and kettledrums (see TYMPANUM), were not included within its province. In proportion to the amount of attention paid to music by the Greeks, it early became the subject of learned research and literary treatment. The philosopher PHYTHAGORAS occupied himself with musical acoustics; he succeeded in representing numerically the relations of the octave, the fifth, and the fourth. For representing the symphonic relations the Pythagorean school invented the monochord or canon, a string stretched over a sounding board and with a movable bridge, by means of which the string could be divided into different lengths; it was on this account known as the school of the Canonici as opposed to the Harmonici, who opposed this innovation and continued to be satisfied with a system of scales ("harmonies") sung by the sole guidance of the ear. Amongst the Canonici were philosophers such as PHILOLAUS ARCHYTAS, DEMOCRITUS, PLATO, and ARISTOTLE. LASUS of Hermione, the master of Pindar, is mentioned as the first author of a theoretical work on music. The "harmonic" ARISTOXENUS (q.v.) of Tarentum, a pupil of Aristotle, was held by the ancients to be the greatest authority on music; from his numerous works was drawn the greatest part of subsequent musical literature. Of other writers on music we may mention the well-known mathematician EUCLID, and the great astronomer CLAUDIUS PTOLEMAeUS, who perfected musical acoustics. Among the Romans, a native development of music was completely wanting. They had, indeed, an ancient indigenous musical instrument, the short and slender Latian flute with four holes; but their national art of flute-playing was, at an early period, thrown into the background by the Etruscan, which was practised as a profession by foreigners, freedmen, and people of the lowest classes of the Roman population. Among the nine old guilds, said to have been instituted by king Numa, there was one of flute-players (tibicines), who assisted at public sacrifices. With the Greek drama, Greek dramatic music was also introduced; it was, however, limited to flute-playing (cp. FLUTE). Stringed instruments were not originally known at Rome, and were not frequently employed till after the second Punic War. Indeed, as Greek usages and manners in general gained ground with the beginning of the 2nd century, so also did Greek music. Greek dances and musical entertainments became common at the meals of aristocratic families, and the younger members of respectable households received instruction in music as in dancing. Though it was afterwards one of the subjects of higher education, it was never considered a real and effective means of training. Entertainments like our concerts became frequent towards the end of the Republic, and formed part of the musical contests instituted by Nero, a great lover of music, in A.D. 60, on the model of the Greek contests. Domitian had an Odeum built on the Campus Martius (Field of Mars) for the musical entertainments of the Agon Capitotinus, instituted by him in A.D. 86, and celebrated at intervals of four years to the end of the classical period. -Passages bearing on music in Roman literature have no independent value, as they are entirely drawn from Greek sources.-For Roman military music, see LITUUS (2) and TUBA.