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name to a school of harmonic theorists.139 We also hear of a fifth-century harmonic theorist called Simos, and it is a natural guess that the simikon was named after him.140 Aristoxenus criticizes some of his predecessors for dividing the octave into twenty-four quarter-tones in their search for the common basis of the various heptatonic modal scales. Perhaps, then, the epigoneion and simikon were board zithers devised in order to experiment with and demonstrate such analyses, and tuned not modally but with the smallest possible intervals between each successive pair of strings. The span of an octave and a fourth, divided into quarter-tones, would yield just thirty-five notes, the number of the simikon's strings. When, some centuries later, performing zithers arrived, the name epigoneion was transferred to them.141 |
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The lute first appeared in Mesopotamia towards the end of the third millennium, and before the middle of the second it spread, together with other west Semitic instruments, to the Hittite and Egyptian kingdoms. A female lutenist in a transparent dress, clearly of Egyptian inspiration, is depicted on a faience bowl of c. 1400-1200 BC found in Cyprus.142 But the instrument does not seem to have reached the Greek world until well into the fourth century BC. |
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There are about a dozen representations of it in Greek art between about 330 and 200, mostly terracottas.143 In one type, seen in three instances, the soundbox has straight edges, converging slightly towards the neck, and a vaulted back with a central spine and triangular base. The neck is clearly demarcated from the soundbox, and up to twice its length. The more common type has a rounded soundbox which tapers into the neck without any obvious dividing |
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139 Aristox. Harm. 1. 3. See p. 225. A similar suggestion about the epigoneion was made by Gevaert, ii. 247f. |
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140 Duris, FGrH 76 F 23. |
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141 Upright zithers are represented on a fragment of a bronze situla from west Iran. dating from the early 2nd millennium (Rimmer, 26f. and pl. VIIb). |
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142 j. L. Myres. Handbook of the Cesnola Collection (New York. 1914). 273f. no. 1574; Aign, 61. |
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143 Listed and discussed by R. A. Higgins and R. P. Winnington-Ingram. JHS 85 (1965), 62-71 with pl. XVL-XVII; cf. Wegner, Bilder, 106f., Paquette. 192f., 200f.; Maas-Snyder, 185f., 197f. figs. 18-19. Remains of a lute were discovered in the early years of the 19th c. in a woman's grave by the road from Athens to Eleusis; see Pöhl-mann, Beitrage, 99-107. |
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