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clapper attached to the sole so that they could beat time audibly for a chorus while they piped.208 |
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Drums, cymbals, and cymbal-clappers |
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The drum known to the Greeks (tympanon, in poetry also typanon) was not a kettledrum, as lexica and commentators often state, but a shallow frame drum or tambour of modest size (Pl. 32). The skin was stretched over a circular open frame of 30-50 cm. diameter; probably the back as well as the front was covered, but only one side was struck. The drum was held upright in the left hand and smitten with the fingertips or knuckles of the right. In some fourth-century representations there is a short handle attached to the frame. |
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The South Italian vases of that time sometimes show a drum of a more elaborate structure, with a smaller but wider circular frame inside the larger, so that from a raised central area the skin slopes away to the rim. The inner and outer areas no doubt gave a different sound.209 |
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The drum is not definitely attested in Greek literature or art before the fifth century BC, unless the fourteenth Homeric Hymn is earlier than that. It was certainly imported from the Orient, where drums of similar form had been in constant use from about 2000 BC.210 In Greece as in the East, the instrument was played predominantly by women; men involved with it were liable to be considered effeminate.211 It appears almost exclusively in connection with orgiastic cults such as those of the Great Mother, Dionysus Baccheus, and Sabazius.212 |
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208 Cratinus fr. 77, Paus. Att. k 48, Poll. 7. 87, 10.153, schol. Aeschin. 1. 126 (who calls it batalos); cf. Alcidamas(?) in PHib. 13. 29f., Lucian, Salt.. 10, Suet. Calig. 54. See Pl. 27 (Pronomus); Wegner, Bilder, 55; A. Bélis, BCH 112 (1988), 323-39. There is evidence that the Hittites had known a similar device (NG i. 392). |
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209 Sachs, HMI 148f.; Wegner, Musikleben, 64-6; Paquette, 206, 209-13. |
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210 Neo-Sumerian and Old Babylonian: Sachs, HMI 76; Rimmer, 23f. and pl. VI; NG xii. 197. Egyptian (New Kingdom): Sachs, 97; NG vi. 72 and 73 fig. 4. Assyrian. Syro-Phoenician: Rimmer pl. VII, IX; NG i. 388f. Jewish: Sachs, 108f. Ty(m)panon may have a connection with the Hebrew name of the instrument, top (Aramaic tuppa): È. Masson, Recherches sur les plus anciens emprunts sémitiques en grec, 94 f. |
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211 Eup. fr. 88; PHib. 54. 11 (cf. above, p. 91), 'and send me Zenobius the effeminate with his drum, cymbals, and clappers, as the women need him for their sacrifice'; Demetr. Eloc. 97. |
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212Hymn. Hom. 14. 3, Pind. fr. 70b. 9, Aesch. fr. 57. 10, Hdt. 4. 76. 4, Eur. HF 889, Hel. 1347, Bacch. 59, 124, 156, 513, Cyc. 65, 205, fr. 586, Ar. Vesp. 119, Lys. 3,388, Diogenes, TrGF 45 F 1.3, Dem. De Cor. 284, Men. Theophoroumene? p. 146 Sandbach (OCT), Dioscorides HE 1623 fl., etc. In vase-painting the drum does not appear before the second half of the 5th c., and then usually in the hands of Bacchants. |
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(Footnote continued on next page) |
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