Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/94

 76 HISTORY OF GREECK. B.C.: this i;, one of the best-ascertained points an:ong the cbscnre chronology of the seventh century ; and there seem grounds for assigning Olympus and Klonas to nearly the same period, a little before Archilochus and KalHnus. 1 To Terpander, Olym- pus, and Klonas. are ascribed the formation of the earliest musi- cal nomes known to the inquiring Greeks of later times : to the first, nomes on the harp ; to the two latter, on the flute, every nome being the general scheme, or basis, of which the airs ac- tually performed constituted so many variations, within certain 1 Tlxcse early innovators in Grecian music, rhythm, metre, and poetry, belonging to the seventh century B.C., were very imperfectly known, even to those contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle who tried to get together facts for a consecutive history of music. The treatise of Plutarch, De Musie:, shows what very contradictory statements he found. He quotes from four different authors, Herakleides, Glaukus, Alexander, and Aris- toxenus, who by no means agreed in their series of names and facts. The Hrst three of them blend together mythe and history ; while even the Ana- graphe or inscription at Sikyon, which professed to give a continuous list of such poets and musicians as had contended at the Sikyonian games, began with a large stock of mythical names, Amphion, Linus, Pierius, etc. (Plutarch, Music, p. 1132.) Some authors, according to Plutarch (p. 1133), made the great chronological mistake of placing Terpander as con- temporary with Hipponax ; a proof how little of chronological evidence was then accessible. That Terpander was victor at the Spartan festival of the Karneia, in 676 B.C., may well have been derived by Hellanikus from the Spartan registers : the name of the Lesbian harper Perikleitas, as having gained the same prize at some subsequent period (Plutarch, De Mus. p. 1133), probably rests on the same authority. That Archilochus was rather later than Terpan- der, and Thaletas rather later than Archilochus, was the statement of Glaukus (Plutarch, De Mus. p. 1134). Klonas and Polymnesrus are placed later than Terpander ; Archilochus later than Klonas : Alkman is said to have mentioned Polymnestus in one of his songs (pp. 1133-1135). It can hardly be true that Terpander gained four Pythian prizes, if the festival was octennial prior to its rcconstitution by the Amphiktyons (p. 1132). Sakadas gained three Pythian prizes after that period, when the festival was quadrennial (p. 1134). ^ Compare the confused indications in Pollux, iv, 65-66, 78-79. Tha abstract given by Photius of certain parts of the Chrcstomathia of Prcclus (published in Gaistbrd's edition of Hephaestion, pp. 375-389), is also ex- tremely valuable, in spite of its brevity and obscurity, about th<: lyric and ehoric poetry of Greece.