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have been set to music, surely going beyond the authors' intentions. In the second century the people of Miletus honoured one C. Aelius Themison, a winner of many prizes, who was 'the first and only man to set Euripides, Sophocles, and Timotheus to his own music.89 |
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Bleeding chunks of Euripides, dished up in various ways, may perhaps be classed as high- to middle-brow entertainment. Middle-to low-brow tastes were catered for by various kinds of performer to be encountered not at the great divine festivals but in more secular settings, privately organized shows, etc. There was the 'hilarode' or 'cheerful singer', who appeared in a white robe and gold crown and sang what seems to have been a straight-faced parody of tragic song, perhaps of a risqué nature, accompanied by a male or female harpist.90 The 'simode', named after Simos of Magnesia, was regarded as similar to the hilarode. Simos, dated to the second half of the fourth century BC, 'corrupted' the melodic style of older composers, and dealt in poetic obscenity.91 Then there were 'lysiodes', named after one Lysis, and 'magodes': both of these were more akin to comic actors. The magode is described as being equipped with drums and cymbals and dressed in feminine garments, but also as playing a variety of unseemly roles both male and female, an adulteress, a procuress, a drunk serenading his mistress, and so on.92 The lysiode seems to have been something similar. We hear of women lysiodes, including one sexy creature who, with tipsy, melting looks at her audience, performed dances of such fluidity that she seemed to have no bones at all in her body, and left everyone extremely contented. These acts were accompanied on auloi of a particular kind.93 |
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It was not only at this cabaret level that female musicians appeared before the public. There were some women citharodes, or at any rate courtesans accomplished in the art of singing to the lyre before an |
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89SEG 11. 52c (p. 215); O. Broneer, Hesp 22 (1953), 192; cf. K. Latte, Eranos 52 (1954), 125-7 and 53 (1955), 75f. = Kleine Schriften (Munich, 1968), 590-4; J. Chailley, Revue de musicologie 39 (1957), 6-9 and 41 (1958), 15-26: A. Machabey. ibid. 41. 1-14; Pöhlmann, Griechische Musikfragmente, 15. |
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90 Aristox. (fr. 110) and Aristocles (c. 100 BC) ap. Ath. 620d, 621 bc: Festus p. 101. 10 M., lasciui et delicati carminis cantator. |
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91 Aristocles loc. cit., Strab. 14. 1. 41 p. 648. |
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92 Aristox. (frs. 110 f.) and Aristocles ap. Ath. locc. citt., Strab. loc. cit. Hesychius defines magody curtly as 'effeminate dancing'. |
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93 Aristox. (fr. 111) and Aristocles ap. Ath. 620e; Strab. loc. cit. (Lysis as a poet of obscenity): Plut. Sull. 36. 2. Women lysiodes: Athenaeus, FGrH 166 F 1; Antip. Sid. HE 584ff. (if the mention of Lysis is correctly understood). Auloi: Posidonius, FGrH 87 F 4 = fr. 88 Th.; above, p. 94 n. 64. On all these kinds of entertainment (hilarody, simody, magody, lysiody) see P. Maas, RE iiiA. 159f. |
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