Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/172

150 150 HISTORY OF THE conformable to the manners and institutions of the early Greeks*. The jEoliansof Lesbos had their origin in Bceotiaf, the country to which the worship of the Muses and the Ihracian hymns belonged and they probably brought with them the first rudiments of poetry. This migration of the art of the Muses is ingeniously expressed by the legend that, after the murder of Orpheus by the Thracian Maenads, his head and lyre were thrown into the sea, and borne upon its waves to the island of Lesbos ; whence singing and the music of the cithara flourished in this, the most musical of islands §. The grave supposed to contain the head of Orpheus was shown in Antissa, a small town of Lesbos ; and it was thought that in that spot the nightingales sang most sweetly ||. In Antissa also, according to the testimony of several ancient writers, Terpander was born. In this way, the domestic impressions and the occupations of his youth may have prepared Terpander for the great undertaking which he afterwards performed. The date of Terpander is determined by his appearance in the mother country of Greece : of his early life in Lesbos nothing is known. The first account of him describes him in Peloponnesus, which at that time surpassed the rest of Greece in political power, in well-ordered govern- ments, and probably also in mental cultivation. It is one of the most certain dates of ancient chronology, that in the 26th Olympiad (b. g. 676) musical contests were first introduced at the feast of Apollo Car- neius, and at their first celebration Terpander was crowned victor. Terpander was also victor four successive times in the musical contests at the Pythian temple of Delphi, which were celebrated there long before the establishment of the gymnastic games and chariot races (Ol. 47), but which then recurred every eight, and not every four years^f. These Pythian victories ought probably to be placed in the period from the 27th to the 33rd Olympiad. For the 4th year of the 33rd Olympiad 645 B. c.) is the time at which Terpander introduced among the Lace- daemonians his nomes for singing to the cithara, and generally reduced music to a system**. At this time, therefore, he had acquired the greatest renown in his art by his most important inventions. In Lace- performance of musical exhibitions, especially at festivals, descended as an heredi- tary privilege. Thus, at Athens, the playing of the cithara at processions belonged to the Eunids. The Eumolpids of Eleusis were originally, as the name proves, a yens of singers of hymns (see above, p. 25, ch. iii. § 7). The flute-players of Sparta con- tinued their art and their rights in families. Stesichorus and Simonides also be longed to musical families, as we will show below. t Ch.i. §5 (p. 9). Chap.ii. § 8. § rritn'iuv S* Io-tJv aDilorccTti, says Phanocles,, the elegiac poet, who gives the most elegant version of this legend (Stob. tit. lxii. p. 399). Nicomachus Geraes. Enchir. Harm. ii. p. 29. ed. Meibom. Antissa is mentioned on the same occasion. ^[ Miillers Dorians, b. iv. ch. vi. §2.
 * There were in several of the Greek states, houses or gentes, yivn, in which the
 * Myrsilus of Lesbos, in Antigon. Caryst. Hist. Mirab. c. 5. In the account in
 * Marmor Parium, ep. xxxiv. 1. 49, compared with Plutarch de Musica, c. 9.