[ 736 ] 
confufedly, as to have given room for a fuppofition 
(20), that it had received two forms, the feven firings 
anfwering, in the oldeft form, to our notes e t f, g y 
b\>, c , d , and in the new one, to e,f, g y o y b y d, e. 
However this may have been, neither the mufical 
nor the harmonic doCtrines could be then in ule, 
exa&ly as they were taught in after times ; and the 
probability feems to be, that the modes were in thole 
days characterized by the fpecies of the leflei con- 
fonances, diateffaron and diapente ; but the theory of 
the Dorian fpecies of diapafon, we may be fure, tootc 
place about the time, when the lyre was brought to 
that compafsj and the other fpecies, though they 
might have exifted before, in the melody of parti- 
cular inftrumentsj as for inftance, the barbarous 
Phrygian, upon its flute, could hardly have been 
taken into the Greek theories of the Science, till the 
cxtenfion of their own favourite inflrument had 
brought the diapafon under confideration : fo that 
the origin of the mufical doClrine of the modes, . is, 
with great probability, to be referred to this im- 
provement of the lyre. . r , 
I come now to the harmonic do&rine, for the 
origin of which we muff look to the invention of 
the fyftem. The greater perfe& fyflem, upon whole 
pitch the modes depended, by the harmonic doctrine, 
confided, as I have already fhewn, of fifteen founds, 
anfwerable to thofe of the lyre ; and it is reafonable 
( 20 ) Ut ex his difficultatibus nos expediamus, duas, non op»- 
niones, fed aetates ftatuere debemus, quibus aliter obtinuerint m- 
tervalla in feptem chordis. Meibomius in Nichomachum, p. 52 - 
See alfo Nichomachus, p. 9. v. 14. & kq* & P- T 7 - V| 2 ^' 
feq. 
to 
