MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.
The sweet responsive lyre
Which long ago the Lesbian bard,
Terpander, did invent, sweet ornament
To the luxurious Lydian feasts, when he
Heard the high-toned pectis.
Now the pectis and the magadis are the same instrument, as Aristoxenus tells us, and Menæchmus the Sicyonian too, in his treatise on Artists. And this last author says that Sappho, who is more ancient than Anacreon, was the first person to use the pectis. Now, that Terpander is more ancient than Anacreon, is evident from the following considerations:—Terpander was the first man who ever got the victory at the Carnean[1] games, as Hellanicus tells us in the verses in which he has celebrated the victors at the Carnea, and also in the formal catalogue which he gives us of them. But the first establishment of the Carnea took place in the twenty-sixth Olympiad, as Sosibius tells us in his essay on Dates. But Hieronymus, in his treatise on Harp-players, which is the subject of the fifth of his Treatises on Poets, says that Terpander was a contemporary of Lycurgus the law-*giver, who, it is agreed by all men, was, with Iphitus of Elis, the author of that establishment of the Olympic games from which the first Olympiad is reckoned. But Euphorion, in his treatise on the Isthmian Games, says that the instruments with many strings are altered only in their names; but that the use of them is very ancient.
38. However, Diogenes the tragic poet represents the pectis as differing from the magadis; for in the Semele he says—
And now I hear the turban-wearing women,
Votaries of th' Asiatic Cybele,
The wealthy Phrygians' daughters, loudly sounding
With drums, and rhombs, and brazen-clashing cymbals,
Their hands in concert striking on each other,
Pour forth a wise and healing hymn to the gods.
Likewise the Lydian and the Bactrian maids
Who dwell beside the Halys, loudly worship
The Tmolian goddess Artemis, who loves
were a great national festival, celebrated by the Spartans
in honour of Apollo Carneius, under which name he was worshipped in several places in Peloponnesus, especially at Amyclæ, even before the return of the Heraclidæ. It was a warlike festival, like the Attic Boedromia. The Carnea were celebrated also at Cyrene, Messene, Sybaris, Sicyon, and other towns.—See Smith's Dict. Ant. in voc.]
- ↑ The [Greek: Karneia
