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with all ten fingers instead of five plus a plectrum. The alternative name, Pythikon, is unambiguous: the instrument was to be heard at the great Pythian musical contests, where prizes for songless kithara-playing are said to have been introduced in 558 BC.53 But 'Pythian kithara-playing' became a recognized art form that could be displayed anywhere. In 97 BC a 'Pythian citharist' is listed among the great band of Athenian musicians who made the pilgrimage to Delphi; he may well have used the Pythikon mentioned by Pollux. A third-century AD inscription from Mr. Helicon records prizewinners in a series of contests, one of which was for a 'Pythian citharist'.54 |
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The pentachordon, a Scythian product strung with five thongs of raw oxhide and played with a goat's-hoof plectrum,55 sounds an altogether more primitive object than any we have been discussing, but perhaps it had charms beyond our imagining. |
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The skindapsos or kindapsos is described as four-stringed, lyre-like, with arms made from springy willow(?) branches. It was apparently plucked with the fingers but also strummed, and it was derided as a silly instrument.56 Aristoxenus listed it as of foreign provenance, and Aelian makes it Indian.57 |
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The spadix, not mentioned before the Imperial age, was a lyre-type instrument with louche associations.58 The byrte and the psaltinx are recorded in lexica with the bare explanations 'lyre' and 'kithara' respectively. The name psaltinx, a pretty coinage, implies that plucking the strings, as opposed to damping or strumming them, had a larger role with this instrument than with most lyres.59 In the interests of completeness I should perhaps mention kinyra, which is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew kinnôr (Septuagint, Josephus) and has no existence as a Greek instrument.60 |
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53 Paus. 10. 7. 7, cf. Strab. 9. 3. 10. |
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54SIG 711 L 32; IG 7. 1776. 19f.; cf. PMichigan 4682 (O. Pearl, Illinois Classical Studies 3 (1978), 132-9. |
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55 Poll. 4. 60. |
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56 Anaxilas fr. 15, Matron, Supp. Hell. 539, Theopompus of Colophon, Supp. Hell. 765, Timon, Supp. Hell. 812. 3, Hsch.  1411-12; below, p. 67 n. 86. |
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57 Aristox. fr. 97, Ael. NA 12. 44. Named after an Indian tribe, the Kindapsoi: Etym. Gen. = Magn. 514. 34, cf. Hsch. k 2730. It is sometimes supposed that the skindapsos was a lute, but the only argument offered is the number of strings (R. A. Higgins and R. P. Winnington-Ingram, JHS 85 (1965), 66f.). |
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58 Quint. Inst. 1. 10. 31, Poll. 4. 59, Nicom. p. 243. 12,  180 p. 229 Rosén, Hsch. ( 1376. The name means 'palm-frond' or 'broken-off bough'. |
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59Psallo 'pluck a string', psaltos 'plucked'; -inx on the model of phorminx (if not of wind instruments such as syrinx, salpinx, photinx). |
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60 J.P. Brown, Journal of Semitic Studies 10 (1965), 207f. See also below. p. 226, on Pythagoras of Zacynthus' triple lyre. |
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