Tell me, I pray you, what this concert ([Greek: hê synaulia hautê]) was
Which he did give you. For you know; but they
Having well learnt, still played[1]. . . .
A concert of sweet sounds, apart from words,
Is pleasant, and not destitute of meaning.
But the poets frequently call the flute "the Libyan flute," as Duris remarks in the second book of his History of Agathocles, because Seirites, who appears to have been the first inventor of the art of flute-playing, was a Libyan, of one of the Nomad tribes; and he was the first person who played airs on the flute in the festival of Cybele." And the different kinds of airs which can be played on the flute (as Tryphon tells us in the second book of his treatise on Names) have the following names:—the Comus, the Bucoliasmus, the Gingras, the Tetracomus, the Epiphallus, the Choreus, the Callinicus, the Martial, the Hedycomus, the Sicynnotyrbe, the Thyrocopicum, which is the same as the Crousithyrum (or Door-knocker), the Cnismus, the Mothon. And all these airs on the flute, when played, were accompanied with dancing.
10. Tryphon also gives a list of the different names of songs, as follows. He says—"There is the Himæus, which is also called the Millstone song, which men used to sing while grinding corn, perhaps from the word [Greek: himalis]. But [Greek: himalis] is a Dorian word, signifying a return, and also the quantity of corn which the millers gave into the bargain. Then there is the Elinus, which is the song of the men who worked at the loom; as Epicharmus shows us in his Atalantas. There is also the Ioulos, sung by the women who spin. And Semus the Delian, in his treatise on Pæans, says—"They used to call the handfuls of barley taken separately, [Greek: amalai]; but when they were collected so that a great many were made into one sheaf, then they were called [Greek: ouloi] and [Greek: iouloi]. And Ceres herself was called sometimes Chloe, and sometimes Ioulo; and, as being the inventions of this goddess, both the fruits of the ground and also the songs addressed to the goddess were called [Greek: ouloi] and [Greek: iouloi]: and so, too, we have the words [Greek: dêmêtrouloi] and [Greek: kalliouloi], and the line—
[Greek: pleiston oulon oulon hiei, ioulon hiei].
But others say that the Ioulis is the song of the workers in
- ↑ This passage, again, is hopelessly corrupt. "Merum Augeæ stabulum."—Casaub.
