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instrument in a number of post-Classical texts. Rhoptra are said to be of bronze, and Nonnus says explicitly that they are shaken, that they clap, and that they have two pieces of bronze yoked together.219 Since rhoptron elsewhere denotes hinged things that come down with a bang (the bar of a trap, or a door-knocker), it would be very appropriately applied to cymbal-clappers of the sort described above. |
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Our concern being with music, it is not necessary to discuss every kind of noise-making device. We need not linger over bells, which, as in the Near East, were used mainly as horse trappings, or over bird-scarers, or children's rattles.220 We must, however, take note of certain items which, while perhaps intrinsically no more musical than those, were used, or may have been used, in a musical context. |
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In several eighth-century women's tombs in Greek South Italy remains have been found of a small instrument consisting of two parallel bronze bars linked by between ten and fifteen wooden spars, each of which was loosely encased in a delicate, flexible coil of bronze wire. Shaking or picking at the instrument would cause the coils to tinkle together. The best-preserved example, with fifteen coils, is from a tomb which also contained a set of sixteen equal tube-chimes and a set of thin metal discs, graded in size, which presumably also belonged to some sort of jingling device.221 The instrument with coils seems closely related to an object represented on an eighth-century Phoenician or Syrian ivory box from Nimrud, in the British Museum. Musicians in procession towards a goddess are playing double pipes, a small round frame drum, and rectangular box-like instruments crossed by a row of bars, which they hold |
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219 Orph. fr. 105b, 152, Flaccus Anth. Pal. 6. 165.3 (FGE p. 47), Cornutus, Theol. Graec. p. 59.22 L., Lucian, Podagra 36, Agathias, Anth. Pal. 6. 74. 7; Nonnus, Dion. 9. 116f., 14. 348, 17. 344, 46. 120, 47. 731, etc. |
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220 Bells: Rimmer, 37-9, ps.-Eur. Rhes. 308; also in shields, Aesch. Sept. 386, Soph. fr. 859; in sentry-relays, Thuc. 4. 135, Ar. Av. 842, 1160; on certain priestly costumes, Plut. Quaest. conv. 672 a, cf. Dem. 25. 90. Bird-scarer (of bronze, used by Heracles to banish the Stymphalian birds): Pisander fr. 4 Bern. = 5 D., Pherec. FGrH 3 F 72, Hellanicus, FGrH 4 F 104, Ap. Rhod. Argon. 2. 1055. Children's rattles: Arist. Pol. 1340b26 (a superior model invented by Archytas), Leonidas, HE 2246, Plut. Quaest. conv. 714e. |
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221 P. Zancani Montuoro, Atti e memorie della Società Magna Grecia 15-17 (1974-6) 27-42 and pl. IX-XVI. |
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