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The same is true of cymbals (kymbala), and of a special type of clapper with bronze heads, both of which are often mentioned in association with drums.213 Cymbals again are of oriental origin, and they were known in Minoan Crete.214 They appear in Greek art from perhaps the seventh century, certainly the sixth, and specimens survive from several sites.215 They are smaller than modern concert cymbals, not more than 18 cm. in diameter. They have the form of a cup surrounded by a fiat rim. At the back they have either a metal ring through which the middle finger could be inserted or a hole through which a thong could be tied. |
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The krotala or krembala mentioned together with drums, or in the context of religious music, are sometimes said to be of bronze,216 and appear to be distinct from the normal castanets used by dancing-girls. One might suppose them to be the same as kymbala, except that both are occasionally named together.217 They are probably little cymbals mounted on clappers, or rather on the flexible prongs of a split cane which only had to be shaken to and fro to make them clash together. Such an instrument certainly existed in the Roman imperial period, in Coptic Egypt, and in Sassanid Persia, and it is also known from Burma.218 The same meaning, I believe, should be assigned to the term rhoptra, which is used of a Bacchic musical |
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(Footnote continued from previous page) |
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For a doubtful drummer in a Laconian figurine of the first half of the 6th c. see Aign, 249. On drums in South Italian art see A.M. Di Giulio in Gentili-Pretagostini 109-13. |
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213Hymn. Hom., Pind., Aesch., Eur. Hel., Cyc. 205, Men., Diogenes, as in n. 212; ps.-Arist. Mir. Ausc. 838b34-839al; PHib. loc. cit.; Philip, Anth. Pal. 6.94, etc. The clash of metal was held to have apotro0paic properties; see Gow on Theoc. Id. 2.36, adding Apollodorus, FGrH 244 F 110, who tells of a gong used by the priest of Kore at Athens on the occasion of her descent to Hades. M. A. Schatkin, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 21 (1978), 147-72, assembles much material on gongs and bells in ancient cult and magic. |
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214 Old Babylonian: Rimmer, 25, 47. Assyrian: Rimmer, 39f., 47, pl. XXI; NG xii. 198, 199 fig. 5. Jewish: Sachs, HMI 121f. Minoan: Aign, 51. The Egyptians do not seem to have had cymbals until Ptolemaic times. |
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215 First on an amphora fragment from Delos and in a 6th-c. Laconian bronze statuette of a girl. Aign, 99f., 249f.; Wegner, Musikleben, 63f., 214; Bilder, 60f.; Paquette, 212 f. |
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216 Eur. Cyc. 205, Anon. PMG 955, Call. fr. 761, Antip. Sid. HE 597. |
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217PHib. and ps.-Arist. locc. citt. |
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218 Rimmer, 41 figs. 11-12; Sachs, HMI 103f., 123 (where he interprets one of the Biblical cymbal types, the  , as this sort of clapper); Behn 50, 78, and figs. 70, 106. The making of krotala from a split cane is attested by schol. Ar. Nub. 260. The J. Paul Getty Museum possesses an example of a similar instrument in which the cymbals slide on a rod fixed between the prongs of a bronze fork: see M. Jentoft-Nilsen, Getty Mus. Jour. 11 (1983), 157f. |
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