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choruses, choropsaltriai.100 Evidently harps had been developed that had greater resonance and carrying power than the gentle-toned Classical instruments. These open-air concert harps must be distinguished from the light sambyke wielded by loosely-dressed girls at private entertainments.101 There is evidence for the harp being taught in East Greek high schools in the second century BC.102 |
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New instruments had come to Greece from the Levant at various times from the Bronze Age on. With the expansion of Hellenic culture into the East after Alexander, it was natural that further oriental instruments should find their way into Greek hands: unfamiliar types of lyre or harp (skindapsos, klepsiambos, nablas) and aulos (gingros/ginglaros); the flute, the lute, the zither, the bagpipe. None of these, however, attained more than a marginal significance. |
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The only new instrument that came to take a prominent role in ancient music-making was a native invention, the organ. It was apparently slow to achieve any currency; we hear nothing of it for more than a century and a half after the time of its inventor Ctesibius. But in 90 BC a Cretan organist named Antipatros went to Delphi as an official emissary from his city of Eleutherna. He so greatly impressed the Delphians with performances which he gave over a period of two days, and with his piety towards Apollo, that they loaded him with prizes at the Pythian Games and with civic honours for him and his descendants to enjoy in perpetuity.103 Such rewards were not uncommonly bestowed on visiting musicians. But in view of the reference to Antipatros' piety towards the god, it may be conjectured that he had applied the organ to that genre of religious music that was traditional at the Pythian festival: the instrumental depiction of Apollo's arrival at Pytho and his victorious fight with the great serpent that guarded the place. If Antipatros played a version of the Pythikos nomos on the organ, the Delphians might well have felt that he had made an important contribution to their god's worship. |
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We find the organ in the service of religion again in Rhodes in the |
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100 Michel (as n. 80) no. 910. 24 (Iasus, 2nd c. BC), SIG 689 and 738 (Pythian Games, 134 and 86 BC). |
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101 See p. 77. |
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102SIG 578 15 (Teos), 959. 10 (Chios); W. R. Paton and E. L. Hicks, The Inscriptions of Cos (Oxford, 1891), 59. |
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103SIG 737. |
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