[30] In like manner Menalippides the lyric poet, Philoxenus and Timotheus, all forsook the ancient music. For whereas until the time of Terpander the Antissaean the harp had only seven strings, he
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added a greater number, and gave its notes a wider range. The wind-music also exchanged its ancient plainness for a more copious variety. For in ancient times, till Menalippides the dithyrambic came into request, the wind-music received salaries from the poets, poetry holding the first rank and the musicians being in the service of the poet. Afterwards that custom grew out of date; insomuch that Pherecrates the comedian brings in Music in woman’s habit, all bruised and battered, and then introduces Justice asking the reason; to which Music thus replies:—
Music.
’Tis mine to speak, thy part to hear,And therefore lend a willing ear;
Much have I suffered, long opprest
By Menalippides, that beast;
He haled me from Parnassus’ springs,
And plagued me with a dozen strings.
His rage howe’er sufficed not yet,
To make my miseries complete.
Cinesias, that cursed Attic,
A mere poetical pragmatic,
Such horrid strophes in mangled verse
Made the unharmonious stage rehearse,
That I, tormented with the pains
Of cruel dithyrambic strains,
Distorted lay, that you would swear
The right side now the left side were.
Nor did my miseries end here;
For Phrynis with his whirlwind brains,
Wringing and racking all my veins,
Ruined me quite, while nine small wires
With harmonies twice six he tires.
Yet might not he so much be blamed,
From all his errors soon reclaimed;
But then Timotheus with his freaks
Furrowed my face, and ploughed my cheeks.
Justice.
Say which of them so vile could be?Music.
Milesian Pyrrhias, that was he,Whose fury tortured me much more
Than all that I have named before;
Where’er I walk the streets alone,
If met by him, the angry clown,
With his twelve cat-guts strongly bound,
He leaves me helpless on the ground.
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Aristophanes the comic poet, making mention of Philoxenus, complains of his introducing lyric verses among the cyclic choruses, where he brings in Music thus speaking:—
Other comedians have since set forth the absurdity of those who have been slicers and manglers of music.
He filled me with discordant measures airy,
Wicked Hyperbolaei and Niglari;
And to uphold the follies of his play,
Like a lank radish bowed me every way.
De musica. Pseudo-Plutarch. ed. William W. Goodwin. Boston. 1874.
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