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the oldest examples of frame harps; that is, they have the angled structure of soundbox and neck strengthened by the addition of a 'front pillar' which joins the extremities and completes the triangle.98 A similar instrument may be represented on certain Cretan seals of the Middle Minoan II period (c. 1900-1700), but the shape is so distorted by the format that one cannot be sure that a lyre is not meant.99 For the next thousand years we draw a complete blank; and then there is only a single vase-painting from a late eighth-century Attic grave, showing a figure holding a crudely-drawn instrument that is most naturally interpreted as a triangular frame harp, though again some have taken it as a lyre.100 |
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Otherwise harps do not appear in Greek art until the second half of the fifth century. However, there are earlier references in poetry. The author of the burlesque poem Margites attributed to Homer, as well as Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Pindar, all know an instrument called paktis (Lesbian, Doric) or pektis (Ionic-Attic). Taking their mentions together with those in other Classical writers, we gather that it was a plucked chordophone with many strings, characterized by the playing of octave concords, or the echoing of the melody at octave intervals, and strongly associated with the Lydians.101 This must be a harp. It might well have come to the East Greeks from Lydia, though the name pektis is a Greek formation.102 |
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In Attic vase-painting after about 450 BC we find angular harps of three different designs, almost always played by women (Pl. 21 and 22). One is an open-sided harp (i.e. with no front pillar), with a soundbox that arches round and grows more capacious towards the end opposite the neck, so that the long strings transmit their vibrations to the area of greatest resonance. It is played with the neck horizontal at the bottom, on the player's left knee, while the |
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98 Aign, 29-32; Maas-Snyder, 1, 15 fig. 1. |
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99 Aign, 35-6, 39-40. |
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100 Athens 784; Aign, 95. |
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101Margites, POxy. 3964; Sappho 22. 11, 156. Alc. 36. 5, Anac. PMG 373, 386, Pind. fr. 125, Soph. fr. 412, Hdt. 1. 17. 1, Ar. Thesm. 1217, Telestes, PMG 810. 4, Diogenes, TrGF 45 F 1, Pl. Resp. 399c. |
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102 From pektos 'joined'. applied in Homer to things made by a joiner (a plough, a timber building); Sophocles (fr. 238) uses it of lyres. In Hellenistic verse and later literary language pektis itself is often used for 'lyre', its proper meaning forgotten. Later still it is used of panpipes (Anon. Bucol. (Bucolici Graeci, p. 168 Gow) 11 and 63; Heliodorus 4. 17.1, Agathias, Anth. Pal. 16. 244; Cometas. Anth. Pal. 9. 586.5; cf. Aristid. Quint. p. 58. 13, Hsch.), while Hesychius and Photius also record an interpretation as 'lute' (probably the source of J. E. Powell's error in his Lexicon to Herodotus s.v.). |
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