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Evidently his ideas had been taken up by younger men. They referred specifically to the ethos of the genera, praising the en-harmonic as conducive to manliness and condemning the chromatic as making them wimpish. The writer of the oration briskly denies these effects, on the ground that diatonic music (which he oddly treats as a variety of chromatic) is regularly used by central Greek tribes much manlier than the vocalists of the tragic stage who use enharmonic. |
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Plato too took up Damon's ideas; he is said to have been taught music by a pupil of Damon's, Dracon, and he mentions Damon in the most commendatory terms.85 He says nothing of the genera, but refers repeatedly to mode and rhythm as agents of ethical influence. |
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And the music-teachers . . . teach boys the compositions of other good melic poets, matching them to the lyre music, and they make the rhythms and harmoniai settle in the boys' souls so that they may be less wild and, through being better rhythmed and attuned, good at speaking and in action; for a man's whole life calls for good rhythm and good attunement.86 |
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So is this the reason, Glaucon, why musical education is the most important, that rhythm and attunement are what most penetrate the inner soul and grasp it most powerfully, bringing good order, and make a person well-regulated if he is educated correctly and the opposite if he is not?87 |
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Attunement possesses motions akin to the soul-circuits in us, and it is a gift of the Muses to the man who employs music intelligently, not for irrational pleasure, as is now supposed to be its utility, but as an ally against the unattuned soul-circuit that exists in us, to bring it into order and concord (symphonia) with itself. And rhythm likewise, on account of the unmeasured and graceless condition in most of us, was given by them to assist us in the same fight.88 |
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Modes and rhythms (rhythms of dance as well as song) are charged with ethos because they are themselves imitations of the voices and movements of people characterized by particular qualities or emotional conditions.89 Music and dance therefore encode ethical qualities already manifested in human conduct and feed them back into the souls of performers and audiences. Consequently it is importantespecially in educationto choose music that conveys |
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85La. 180d, cf. 197d. Dracon: ps.-Plut. De mus. 1136f, Olympiodorus, Vita Platonis 1.38 Westerm., Anon. Vita Platonis p. 6.43 W. = Proleg. philos. Plat. 2 Herm. |
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86Prt. 326 ab. |
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87Resp. 401d. |
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88Tim. 47 de. |
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89Resp. 399a-c, 399e-400a, Leg. 654e-655d, 660a, 668a-670c, 798d, 812c. |
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