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underlay and no lever.65 In two fourth-century Italian paintings and on the Boston Throne the strings are attached to rings which encircle the yoke and have projecting lugs above and below to facilitate adjustment.66 Finally, from the second century BC there is evidence for tuning-pegs of the modern sort that could be twisted in the yoke.67 |
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The question of the scales to which the lyre was tuned will be addressed in a later chapter. But while we are considering the physical features of the instrument, there is more to be said about the number of its strings. What we have seen so far is that the standard number from the seventh century onward, as in the Minoan and Mycenaean era, was seven, but that there is fairly abundant evidence for round-based box lyres with only three or four strings in and before the eighth century, and that some barbitoi may have had five or six. |
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The frequency with which vase-painters depict precisely seven strings shows that they often took care over the matter and counted. But we cannot expect them to do so invariably, and when they depict more or less than seven we must clearly be very cautious about taking them literally. On the other hand we should not make it an article of faith that seven is the only possible number. If we find six or eight strings represented, it may very well mean nothing. But when we find nine, ten, or eleven, this is not so easy to dismiss as mere carelessness. A nine-stringed lyra appears as early as c. 560,68 and there are about five more instances in the Classical period; in the fourth century there are several round-based and Italiote kitharas with nine strings. Those cited in Table 3.1 are even better provided, and a number of further examples occur in later reliefs and Roman wall-paintings.69 |
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65 e.g. Paquette, 129 pl. vb, 163 L27, 179 B8. |
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66 See Paquette, 119 C30, 161 L26; A. Bélis, BCH 109 (1985), 209. |
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67 Pöhlmann (as n. 61 ). 310f.; Bélis, 217. Pöhlmann interprets Pherecrates fr. 155. 14-16 as evidence that the 5th-c. citharode Phrynis invented this method of tuning. and he finds an allusion to it also in Pl. Resp. 531 b. Both passages, however, are to be otherwise explained; see pp. 225, 360. |
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68 Corinthian hydria, Paris E643; Maas-Snyder, 38, 51 fig. 15a. |
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69 O.J. Gombosi. Tonarten und Stimmungen der antiken Musik (Copenhagen. 1939), 72f. A grave stele from Crisa (E. Braun, Ann. Ist. (1855), 63 pl. 16; T. Schreiber, Atlas of Classical Antiquities (London, 1895), i. 89. 8) shows a kithara with nineteen strings. |
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