PREHISTORIC ART. 523 



ascribe it to the younger Olympus five hundred years later. A bas- 

 relief in the Albani Villa at Rome shows Pan teaching Olympus to 

 play the syrinx. It is represented in Baumann's History of Music' 



A great change is supposetl to have been brought about among the 

 Pelasgians by the entrance of the foreign colonists before mentioned. 

 The influence of these people, more heroic and energetic, was to do 

 away with the delicate estimation of sounds and to hriug about arrange- 

 ments in which the intervals were larger. nen(!e came into vogue cer- 

 tain musical forms which took the names of the peoi^le to whom they 

 were due, and tliree of these, namely, the Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian, 

 took at a later date a permanent ])lace in the Greek system, and gave 

 corresponding varieties of character to the music, the influence of which 

 has been perpetuated to our own day. 



About a century after Terpander came Pythagoras, whose genius as 

 a philosopher enabled him not only to effect great improvements in the 

 capabilities of music, but to establish for the art a definite and scien- 

 tific basis intelligible for all time. He was, indeed, the founder of 

 theoretical music, for it was he who first traced the laws which govern 

 the relations of sounds to each other, and by this means brought music 

 within the domain of natural i)hilosophy. He established the principle 

 that intervals could be appreciated intellectually by the aid of numbers 

 instead of as formerlj', by the ear alone. " Sense," he said, " is an uncer- 

 tain guide; numbers can not fail." Pythagoras effected this by means 

 of the stretched strings used for the lyre. He had acuteness enough 

 to perceive the fundamental fact that the length of the string might be 

 made to supply an exact definition of the pitch of the note it sounded. 

 Hence he was enabled to attach to each sound a certain numerical 

 value, and thus to compare it with other sounds and to establish posi- 

 tive and definite relations between them. The instrument which Pytha- 

 goras used in these investigations was called a canon, and appears to 

 have been similar to our mouochord. 



The importance of this step, connecting for the first time music and 

 mathematics, can hardly be overrated, and as the method Pythagoras 

 introduced has become verified and established, in use by all subsequent 

 experience and investigation, he is fairly entitled to be called the 

 "father of musical science." Out of his investigations the Diatonic 

 scale grew into being. Euclid (B. 0. 300), about two hundred and fifty 

 years after Pythagoras, describes the formula and gives the proportion- 

 ate length of string corresponding to the various notes of the scale, a 

 mode of determination quite conclusive. 



Other elements have been added, but the Diatonic scale has remained 

 essentially unchanged. As the series of notes was when Euclid de- 

 scribed it, so it is now, and as it formed the basis of Greek melodies 

 two thousand years ago, so it forms the basis of the music of the pres- 

 ent day. 



' Voliniio I, fig. 87, p. 128. 



