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softer tone than the lyra, and this is confirmed by ancient statements.41 Although seven is the commonest number of strings shown in the vase-paintings, as we might expect, there are enough well-executed examples with only five or six to suggest the possibility that the barbitos was sometimes so strung.42 |
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The barbitos is first mentioned by Anacreon, though Sappho and Alcaeus referred to an instrument called barmos which some ancient scholars took to be the same.43 It appears in Attic art rather suddenly in the last quarter of the sixth century, and fades away in the second half of the fifth. The attractive suggestion has been made that it was brought to Athens by Anacreon when he moved there from Samos.44 Certainly it is associated with him both by the vase-painters and in later literary allusions.45 It is nearly always depicted in the context of the symposium or associated revelry and amorous-ness, or in the hands of Dionysus and his entourage. It evidently enjoyed a great vogue in certain elegant Athenian drinking circles in the late sixth and early fifth centuries. The comic poet Magnes probably made fun of them in his lost play The Barbitos-players. Aeschylus may have provided Dionysus with a barbitos in his Edonoi.46 Pindar, Bacchylides, and Euripides mention it, but only in connection with private festivity.47 |
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41 Pind. fr. 125, who speculates that its invention was inspired by the octavedoubling (in the bass?) of the deep Lydian harp; ps.-Arist. De audibilibus 803a34, schol. Eur. Alc. 345, Etymologicum Genuinum b 38, al. |
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42 See Maas-Snyder, 124. |
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43 Anac. PMG 472, Sappho 176, Alc. 70. 4. 5th-cent. vase-painters at Athens depict Sappho playing a barbitos (Pl. 19). Cf. Hor. Carm. 1. 1. 34. The form baromos attributed to Sappho in Ath. 182f. is probably a corruption, cf. 636 c and Alc. loc. cit.; while the Aeolic barmitos cited by the Etymologicum Genuinum b 38 = Etym. Magn. 188. 21 may be an accidental and spurious product of an effort to use barmos in support of the alleged etymology of barbitos from barymitos 'with deep-toned threads'. Barmos may have some distant kinship with phorminx, and barbitos with Middle Persian barbat 'short-necked lute'. |
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44 Maas-Snyder, 40. 113, 118f., 127. A similar instrument is represented on an East Greek sealstone a little earlier than the first Attic pictures (Maas-Snyder, 39, 52 fig. 18). |
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45 Critias fr. 8. 4 Diehl, 'Simon.' Epigr. 67 Page, Neanthes, FGrH 84 F 5 (Anacreon as inventor of the barbitos), Antip. Sid. HE 273, Anon. Anth. Pal. 7. 23 b, Anacreontea 15. 34; Wegner, Musikleben, 44f.; Maas-Snyder, 118-20. |
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46 See the parody at Ar. Thesm. 136f. |
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47 Pind. frs. 124d, 125; Bacchyl. frs. 20B 1, 20c2 (Enkomia); Eur. Alc 345, Cyc. 40. Theoc. Id. 16. 45 perhaps echoes an Enkomion of Simonides for the Scopadae rather than the 'Epinicia and Laments' to which the scholiast refers: see Simon. fr. eleg. 29. 3 West2. Proclus in Phot. Bibl. 321 a mentions the barbitos as the instrument for singing skolia to at drinking-parties. |
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