Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/101

 CIIORIC PERFORMANCES AT SPARTA. 83 the chorus. lie was a native of Sardis in Lydia, or at least his family were so ; and he appears to have come in early life to Sparla, though his. genius and mastery of the Greek language discountenance the story that he was brought over to Sparta as a slave. The most ancient arrangement of music at Sparta, gener ally ascribed to Terpander, 1 underwent considerable alteration, not only through the elegiac and anapaestic measures of Tyrtacug, but also through the Kretan Thaletas and the Lydian Alkman The harp, the instrument of Terpander, was rivalled and in part superseded by the flute or pipe, which had been recently rendered more effective in the hands of Olympus, Klonas, and Polymnestus, and which gradually became, for compositions intended to raise strong emotion, the favorite instrument of the two, being em- ployed as accompaniment both to the elegies of Tyrtjeus, and to the hyporchemata (songs, or hymns, combined with dancing) of Thaletas ; also, as the stimulus and regulator to the Spartan mil- itary march. 2 These elegies (as has been just remarked) were sung by one person, in the midst of an assembly of listeners, and there were doubtless other compositions intended for the individual voioe. But in general such was not the character of music and poetry at Sparta ; everything done there, both serious and recreative, was public and collective, so that the chorus and its performances received extraordinary development. It has been already stated, that the chorus usually, with song and dance combined, consti- tuted an important part of divine service throughout all Greece, and was originally a public manifestation of the citizens gener- 1 Plutarch, De MusicH. pp. 1134, 1135; Aristotle, De Lacedsemon. Re- publicft, Fragra. xi, p. 132, ed. Neumann; Plutarch, De Sera Numin. Vindict. c. 13, p. 558. 8 Thucyd. v, 69-70, with the Scholia, perti TUV Ko'^e/MLKuv voftuv AaK.e6ai/j.6vioi de flpadeuf Kill VTrb avTirjriJv TTO^MV vojiij kyuadearuTuv, oi) TOV deiov %upiv, u/JJ Iva 6fj.a7.ue fieri! (tvdfiov /3aivoiv, Kal /ITJ 6iaaTra<r&c.iii OVTDlf f] TU^lf. Cicero, Tuscnl. Qu. ii, 16. " Spartiatarum quorum procedit Mora ad tibiam, neque adhibetur ulla sine anapoestis pedibus hortatio." . The flute was also the instrument appropriated to Komus, or the excited movement of half-intoxicated revellers (Hesiod, Scut. Ilercul. 280 ; A ihena Xiv, pp. 617-618).