MUSIC. could so easily divine the meanings of poems,) when explaining this verse, affirms that the magadis was a kind of flute: though Aristoxenus does not say so either in his treatise on the Flute-players or in that on Flutes and other Musical Instruments; nor does Archestratus either,—and he also wrote two books on Flute-players; nor has Pyrrhander said so in his work on Flute-players; nor Phillis the Delian,—for he also wrote a treatise on Flute-players, and so did Euphranor. But Tryphon, in the second book of his essay on Names, speaks thus—"The flute called magadis." And in another place he says—"The magadis gives a shrill and deep tone at the same time, as Anaxandrides intimates in his Man fighting in heavy Armour, where we find the line—
I will speak to you like a magadis,
In soft and powerful sounds at the same time.
And, my dear Masurius, there is no one else except you who can solve this difficulty for me.
36. And Masurius replied—Didymus the grammarian, in his work entitled Interpretations of the Plays of Ion different from the Interpretations of others, says, my good friend Æmilianus, that by the term [Greek: magadis aulos] he understands the instrument which is also called [Greek: kitharistêrios]; which is mentioned by Aristoxenus in the first book of his treatise on the Boring of Flutes; for there he says that there are five kinds of flutes; the parthenius, the pædicus, the citharisterius, the perfect, and the superperfect. And he says that Ion has omitted the conjunction [Greek: te] improperly, so that we are to understand by [Greek: magadis aulos] the flute which accompanies the magadis; for the magadis is a stringed ([Greek: psaltikon]) instrument, as Anacreon tells us, and it was invented by the Lydians, on which account Ion, in his Omphale, calls the Lydian women [Greek: psaltriai], as playing on stringed instruments, in the following lines—
But come, ye Lydian [Greek: psaltriai], and singing
Your ancient hymns, do honour to this stranger.
But Theophilus the comic poet, in his Neoptolemus, calls playing on the magadis [Greek: magadizein], saying—
It may be that a worthless son may sing
His father or his mother on the magadis ([Greek: magadizein]),
