Plato's time was so constructed, and so full of variety 

 that he regarded it as dangerous, and too apt to relax 

 the mind. In Anacreon's time, it had already ob- 

 tained forty strings. Ptolemy and Porphyry describe 

 instruments resembling the lute and theorbo, having a 

 handle with keys belonging to it, and the strings ex. 

 tended from the handle over a concave body of 

 wood. There is to be seen at Home an ancient sta- 

 tue of Orpheus, with a musical bow in his right hand, 

 and a kind of violin in his left. In the commenta- 

 ries of Philustratus by Vigenere, is a medal of Nero 

 with a violin upon it. In the passages referred to be- 

 low, it plainly appears, that the flute was carried to 

 so high a degree of perfection by the ancients, that 

 there were various kinds of them, and so different in 

 sound, as to be wonderfuJly adapted to express all 

 manner of subjects. And in L'ertullian we meet with a 

 very full description of an hydraulic organ, invented 

 by Archimedes, which was so far from being inferior in 

 any respect to ours, that it plainly exceeded them in 

 its mechanism, as being made to play by water. u Be- 

 hold, says Tertuliian, that astonishing and admirable 

 hydraulic organ ot Archimedes, composed of such a num- 

 ber of pieces, consisting each of so many different parts, 

 connected together by such a quantity of joints, and 

 containing such a variety of pipes for the imitation of 

 voices, conveyed in such a multitude of sounds, modu- 

 lated into such a diversity of tones, breathed from so 

 immense a combination of flutes ; and yet all taken 

 together constitute but one single instrument." 



19. Should we for the present confine our views 

 only to harmony, or the consenting notes in music, 

 we vshall find that the ancients were by no means ig- 

 norant of it. Many respectable authors have cur. 

 sorily treated of it. iMacrobius speaks of five notes, 

 among which the base bears such a symphony with 

 those above it, that however different tlu y be among 

 themselves, they come to the ear as if they altogether 

 composed but one sound, Ptolemy, speaking of the 



