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pleated robe, a decorated mantle, and a gold wreath on his head.24 His kithara might have gilded arms and be inlaid with carved ivory, or (at least at a later period) set with jewels and precious stones. Sometimes he suspended from it a length of embroidered cloth, a practice inspired by oriental pomp.25 |
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The round-based kithara continues to appear on the vases of the Classical period.26 However, after about 60 BC it is less common than the square-based type; after about 530 we find it only in Dionysiac and carousal scenes; and after about 500 it is played only by women or by Muses. By the fourth century it has practically disappeared.27 Evidently it was disdained by professionalsit is not furnished with the tension levers (if that is what they are) of the citharode's instrument28while symposiasts and other amateurs came to prefer the lighter bowl lyres, the lyra and barbitos, leaving their old kitharas for the women. |
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Two other forms of kithara must be mentioned. One of them appears in a number of fifth-century vase paintings, in most cases in the hands of one of the legendary Thracian singers, Orpheus or Thamyras. Hence it has been called the 'Thamyras kithara' or 'Thracian kithara'.29 Its base can be either round or squared off with deeply fluted corners. The top edge of the soundbox is a convex arc, with no extensions towards the arms, which are thin and willowy, somewhat like those of the barbitos, but conspicuously fibbed, and describing a different curve. The round-based version, which has an |
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24 See Pl. 14. Cf. Hdt. 1. 24. 4-6, Plato Com. fr. 10, Aelius Dionysius  58, Poll. 10. 190; for a later period, Rhet. Her. 4. 47 with Lucian, Ind. 8-10, Ov. Met. 11. 165-7; M. Bieber, JDAI 32 (1917), 65f.; Maas-Snyder, 58. |
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25 Gilded arms: Soph. fr. 244. Ivory: Ar. Av. 218; Maas-Snyder, 35. Amber? Ar. Eq 532. Ivory facings are already Mycenaean (Maas-Snyder, 8). Lyres found in Sumerian royal tombs were cased or decorated with gold or silver and adorned with semi-precious stones. We recall Achilles fine ornamented lyre with its silver crossbar (Il. 9. 187; cf. Pind. Pyth. 4. 296). For bejewelled kitharas in the later Graeco-Roman world cf. Ovid, Rhet. Her., and Lucian, locc. citt.; Juv. 6. 382. For the patterned cloth hanging see Maas-Snyder, 32-4, 68. 7th-c. Assyrian reliefs show harpisis with decorative woven cloths hanging from the base of their instrument. |
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26 See Pl. 15. In this context it is often called a phorminx (although there is no evidence that this name was ever used by the Greeks to distinguish it from the squarebased kithara), or by others a 'cradle kithara'. |
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27 Maas-Snyder, 29f., 139-45, 170. |
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28 B. Lawergren, however, suggests that its arms were hinged and could be pushed sideways to alter the tension of the strings (Imago Musicae, 1 (1984), 171). |
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29 See Pl. 16; Maas-Snyder, 145-7. Others have suggested 'horned kithara' or 'cithare-lyre'. The lyre held by Musaeus in New York 37. 11. 23, which Maas-Snyder include under this type. seems to me to be a standard kithara. |
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