364 
MUSI C. 
jarring, ungrateful, noife: “ Stridenti miferum ftipula 
difpendere carmen.” Cicero calls it fifiula pajloricia , 
which might be Engliftied, “ a Roman catcall.” 
According to Apuleius, who difcovers himfelfin many 
parts of his writings to have been an excellent judge of 
mufic, it muft have been much cultivated, and well un- 
derftood, in his time, which was the fecond century. He 
defcribes the feveral parts of a mufical entertainment in 
the following manner : “ She ordered the cithara to be 
played, and it was done : fhe alked for a concert of flutes, 
and their mellifluous founds were immediately heard : (he, 
laftly, fignified her pleafure that voices fliould be joined to 
the inllruments, and the fouls of the audience were in- 
ftantly foothed with l'weet founds.” Book xi 
The fame author likewife defcribes a mufical perform¬ 
ance at the celebration of a great feftival in honour of 
Ceres, or Ifls, at the time of his own initiation into the 
Eleufinian myfteries, in fuch a manner as would fuit 
many modern performances. “ A band of muficians now 
filled the air with a melodious concert of flutes and voices. 
They were followed by a chorus of youths, drefled in 
white robes, l'uitable to the folemnity, who alternately 
fung an ingenious poem, which an excellent poet, in- 
fpired by the mufes, had compofed, in order to explain 
the fubjedt of this extraordinary feftival. Among thefe, 
marched feveral players on the flute, confecrated to the 
o-reat Serapis, who performed many airs dedicated to the 
worlhip of the god in his temple. After this, the vene¬ 
rable minifters of the true religion (hook with all their 
force the fiftrums of brafs, filver, and gold, which pro¬ 
duced tones fo clear and fonorous, that they might have 
been heard at a great diftance from the place of perform¬ 
ance.” Book v. 
One great impediment to the progrefs of mufic among 
the .Romans was, that they wholly abandoned to their 
(laves the practice of the liberal arts; and the greater 
their talents, the more feverely were they in general 
treated. Whereas the Greeks, on the contrary, con¬ 
fined theexercife of thofe arts, as the epithet liberal im¬ 
plies, to free men, and perfons of birth and rank, for¬ 
bidding their (laves the (tudy and ufe of them. Whence 
it is eafy to imagine which of thefe two nations would 
bring them to the greateft degree of perfection. “ What 
Nature was to the Greeks, fays the abbe Gedoyn, the 
Greeks were to the Romans, as the natives of Greece had 
no other example than Nature herfelf to follow ; for no 
nation, with which they had any intercourfe, was learned 
and polilhed before them. The Romans, on the contrary, 
had the Greeks for models.” 
Notwithftanding all the afliftance which the Romans 
received from the Greeks in the polite arts, and all the 
encouragement of thefe inftitutions, they never advanced 
fo far in them as the modern Italians have done ; who, 
without any foreign help, have greatly furpaffed not only 
their forefathers the ancient Romans, but even the Greeks 
themfelves, in feveral of the arts, and in no one fo much 
as that of mufic, in which every people of Europe have, 
at different times, confented to become their fcholars. 
We now proceed to give a defcription of the inftru- 
ments reprefented on the annexed Plate XV. raoft of 
which have been alluded to, and their origin pointed out, 
in the preceding enquiry, which, though it has extended 
to a much greater length than we intended, has not, we 
hope, been found uninterefting. The only obfervation 
we have now to make, is one which has probably already 
occurred to the reader 5 namely, that the different claim¬ 
ants among the Greeks to the fame mufical difcoveries, 
only proye that mufic was cultivated in different coun¬ 
tries ; and that the inhabitants of each country invented 
and improved their own inftruments, fomeof which hap¬ 
pening to refemble thofe of other parts of Greece, ren¬ 
dered it difficult for hiftorians to avoid attributing the 
fame invention to different perfons. Thus the fingle flute 
was given to Minerva, and Marfyas; the fyrinx, or fiftula, 
to Pan, and to Cybele j and the lyre, or cithara, to Mer¬ 
cury, Apollo, Amphion, Linus, and Orpheus. Indeed, 
the mere addition of aftring or two to an inftrument with¬ 
out a neck, was fo obvious and eafy, that it is fcarcely 
poflible not to conceive many people to have done it at 
the fame time. 
Fig. i. reprefents the head of a tibicen, or flute-player, 
to (how the capiftrum , or bandage, ufed for the purpofe of 
augmenting the force of the wind, and for preventing the 
fwelling of the cheeks of the performer. See p. 295 and 
352. Thele flutes are equal in diameter and length; and, 
as no holes are vifible in them, they muft have been of the 
trumpet-kind. The drawing of this was made from a 
vafe in Sir William Hamilton’s Collection of Etrufcan 
Antiquities, vol. i. 
The two inftruments of the flute kind which Nature 
has conftrufted, and from which mankind, taught per¬ 
haps by the whiffling reeds, firft tried to produce mufical 
founds, feem to have been the (hells of fifties, and the 
horns of quadrupeds 5 and the p.oi/a,vM<;, or fingle pipe, 
appears in fculpture to have been a mere horn in its na¬ 
tural form. Then fucceeded the avena , or fingle oaten 
ltalk ; the calamus, or fingle reed, or cane j and after¬ 
wards the fyrinx, oxfijlula, compofed of a number of reeds, 
of different lengths, tied together. Thefe fimple inftru- 
tnents preceded the invention of foramina, or holes, by 
which different founds could be produced from the fame 
pipe. The tibia was originally a flute made of the (hank, 
or (liin-bone, of an animal; and it feems as if the wind- 
inftruments of the ancients had been long made of fuch 
materials as Nature had hollowed, before the art of boring 
flutes was dilcovered. That once known, they were 
formed of box-tree, laurel, brafs, filver, and even of gold. 
There are certain epithets applied to the theatrical 
flutes in the titles to the comedies of Terence, which 
have extremely embarraffed the critics : fuch as pares , 
impures, dextrce, fmijlrce; and it has been long doubted, 
whether pares and imparcs meant double and fingle flutes, 
or equal arid unequal in point of length and lize. Dr. 
Burney inclines to the latter : for in none of the repre- 
fentations in ancient painting or fculpture, which he had 
feen, does it appear that the tibicen, either at facrifices 
or in the theatre, plays on a fingle flute, though we as 
often fee double flutes of different lengths in his hands 
as of the fame length ; and, as harmony, or mufic in dif¬ 
ferent parts, does not appear to have been pra&iled by 
the ancients, the flutes of equal length may naturally be 
fuppoled to imply unifons ; and unequal, fuch as are oc¬ 
taves to each other. But, as to the diftinftion between 
right-handed and left-handed flutes, the doctor owns liim- 
felf far from being pofieffed of any clear and decilive idea 
concerning it. And, indeed, the flute had fo many differ¬ 
ent names in the ciafiics, and is applied to fo many differ-' 
ent purpofes, that M. le Fevre, who had undertaken their 
explanation, ended his fruitless labours by a copy of Latin 
verfes in praife of Minerva, for throwing the flute into 
the fea, (fee p. 351.) and anathematifing thole who (hould 
take it out. It has been imagined by the abbe du Bos, 
that, when the theatrical flutes were unequal, a drone- 
bafs was performed on the largeft ; but the neceflity of a 
clear and undifturbed elocution on the ftage, joined to 
the tendernefs of the ancients for poetry, would have 
rendered the noife and confufion of a drone-bafs more 
offenfive to fuch as attended to the intereft of the drama, 
than the mod florid and complicated counterpoint. It is 
no uncommon thing to fee one of the unequal flutes ufed 
upon thefe occafions ftraight, and the other curved at the 
end, as at fig. 2. Hefychius, as quoted by Bartholinus, 
fays that the horned-flute was for the left hand, the 
ftraight one for the right, That the longcjl of the two' 
inftruments was for the left hand, Pliny feems to prove, 
when he (peaks of cutting the reeds with which they 
were made ; for he fays the part next the ground, being 
the wideft, ferves for the left-hand flutes, &c. Thefe 
paflages, however, furni(h no proofs of their being def- 
tined for different parts, or any thing more than octaves 
tu 
