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particular musician's repertory, and so forth.61 In ordinary usage it had a narrower application. It referred to a specific, nameable melody, or a composition in its melodic aspect, sung or played in a formal setting in which it was conventionally appropriate: a sacrifice, a funeral, a festival competition, or a professional display. It was not, initially, genre-specific: the word could be applied to melodies accompanying hexameter poetry, elegy, iambic verse, lyric narrative, epinicians, dithyrambs.62 There were citharodic, citharistic, aulodic, and auletic nomoi, and we know a number of their names in each category.63 Some were named after the god in whose honour they were performed: the nomos of Athena, of Zeus, of Apollo, of Ares, of Pan, of Dionysus, of the Mother of the Gods. Some had ethnic names: Boeotian, Aeolian. Some were identified by their supposed composers: Polymnestean, Terpandrean, nomos of Olympus, of Hierax; by the purpose or occasion with which they were associated: Kradias (fig-branch),64 Epitymbidios (funeral), Elegoi, Iamboi, Kyklios (dithyrambic), Komarchios (starting the revel), Exodios (exit of a chorus), Pythikos; by the rhythm: Trochaic, Enoplian; or by some other intrinsic feature: Oxys (high-pitched), Orthios (steep), Kolobos (truncated), Polykephalos (many-headed), Schoinion (drawn out like a rope), Trimeles (three-mode), Tetraoidios (four-note). This is not a complete catalogue. |
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It is unclear what degree of fixity and detail was implicit in a nomos' identity. Take, for example, the nomos of Athena, which was probably a standard item at the Panathenaic musical contests. We are told that it was a creation of Olympus', and that it was in the enharmonic genus and the Phrygian mode (or key). The introduction was in the paion epibatos rhythm, and then came a part called 'the harmonia' in trochaic rhythm, which considerably changed the |
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61 Alcm. PMG 40, Pind. Nem. 5. 35, fr. 35c, Aesch. Supp. 69, Ag. 1142, 1153, Cho. 424, 822, ps.-Aesch. PV 575, Soph. frs. 245, 463, 861, Eur. Hec. 685, Hel. 188, Telestes, PMG 810. 3. |
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62 See CQ 21 (1971), 310. |
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63 Mostly from the Parian Marble FGrH 239 A 10. ps.-Plut. De mus. 1132d, 1133a, 1133d-1134b, 1141b, 1143bc, Poll. 4. 65-6, 78-9, 83, Hsch., Suda; various Classical references, as Hipponax fr. 153, Pratinas, PMG 713 (i), Pind. Ol. 1. 102, Pyth. 12. 23, Hdt. 1. 24. 5, Soph. ft. 966, Ar. Ach. 14, 16, Eq. 9, 1279, Cratinus fr. 308, Glaucus of Rhegium fr. 2, Epicrates fr. 2, Pl. Cra. 417e. One or two names are common to more than one category. |
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64 Referring to an Ionian ritual in which a scapegoat figure was flagellated with fig-branches. |
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