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hauled upon from the rear decks. 'And the contrivance is suitably so named, because when it is raised the combined shape of the ship and the stairway resembles a sambyke.'123 The sambyke, then, had a more or less boat-shaped soundbox and a neck that rose from one end of it at an angle approaching the vertical. Its stringswhether or not the ships' cables contributed to the likenessmust have run diagonally from the neck to the face of the soundbox. |
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This can only be a form of the primitive arched harp (p. 70). Anyone who glances at the illustrations in The New Grove, xii. 196-7 (Sumerian, 3400-2400 BC), vi. 74 (Egyptian, c. 1567-1320 BC), viii. 191 (Indian, At) c. 320-500), 192 and 213 (modern African), and iii. 481-2 (Burmese), will see at once what kind of instrument the ship and stairway contrivance was named after. It is a design that has survived with little variation for some 5,000 years. |
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In Greek and Roman art it is elusive. But there is one representation on an Athenian vase of the second quarter of the fifth century,124 and another on a Roman fresco from Stabiae, now in the Naples Museum. The Greek example has a soundbox like that of a lyra, made from a tortoise shell with a hide stretched over it.125 Five strings can be seen. There is a bridge on the soundbox like that of a lyra, but this may be a mistake of the painter in treating an unfamiliar instrument; he seems to be in some doubt as to how the strings are attached. The player, who is not actually playing but standing idle while a friend plays the pipes, holds a plectrum in her right hand. The sambyke in the Roman painting is made of wood and has about seven strings.126 |
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Eupolis couples the iambyke with the trigonos as the appropriate instruments for adulterers to serenade their mistresses and entice them out. Sambyke and trigonos are often mentioned together.127 |
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123 Polyb. 8. 4. 2-11, cf. Andreas, FGrH 571 F 1, Plut. Marc. 15. 5, and others cited by Ath. 634a, Festus (Paulus) p. 434f. L., Vegetius 4. 21. |
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124 See Pl. 23; white-ground lekythos, Brussels A 1020. Paquette, 194 (on his fig. H3), correctly interprets it as an arched harp and refers to African parallels, but he fails to identify it as the sambyke. (The identification is suggested by R. A. Higgins and R. P. Winnington-Ingram, JHS 85 (1965), 67 n. 34.) Maas-Snyder, 95f., 110 fig. 23, erroneously take it to be a lyra seen sideways on. It is clear that it has a single neck, not two arms. |
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125 Exactly the same is true of many Ugandan harps NG viii. 214. |
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126 The early Hellenistic explorer Pythagoras recognized the sambyke in a fourstringed instrument that he saw in use among the Nubian Troglodytes of coastal Sudan and also among the Parthians (Ath. 633 f). |
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127 Eup. fr. 148. 4, Arist. Pol. 1341a41, Aristox. fr. 97, Phillis ap. Ath. 636b, Plut. De tribus reipublicae generibus 827 a. |
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