Fig. 8.—A Muse playing the Diaulos.
The syrinx, or Pandean pipe, had from three to nine tubes, but seven was the usual
number. The straight trumpet, salpinx, and the curved horn, keras, made of brass, were used exclusively in war. The small hand-drum, called tympanon, resembled in shape our tambourine, and was covered with parchment at the back as well as at the front. The kymbala were made of metal, and resembled our small cymbals. The krotala were almost identical with our castanets, and were made of wood or metal.
The Etruscans and Romans.
The Romans are recorded to have derived some of their most popular instruments originally from the Etruscans, a people which at an early period excelled all other Italian nations in the cultivation of the arts as well as in social refinement, and which possessed musical instruments similar to those of the Greeks. It must, however, be remembered that many of the vases and other specimens of art which have been found in Etruscan tombs, and on which delineations of lyres and other instruments occur, are supposed to be productions of Greek artists whose works were obtained from Greece by the Etruscans, or who were induced to settle in Etruria.
The flutes of the Etruscans were not unfrequently made of ivory; those used in religious sacrifices were of box-wood, of a species of the lotus, of ass’ bone, bronze and silver. A bronze flute, somewhat resembling our flageolet, has been found in a tomb; likewise a huge trumpet of bronze. An Etruscan cornu is deposited in the British Museum, and measures about four feet in length.
To the Etruscans is also attributed by some the invention of the hydraulic organ. The Greeks possessed a somewhat similar contrivance which they called hydraulis, i.e., water-flute and which probably was identical with the organum
hydraulicum of the Romans. The instrument ought more properly to be regarded as a pneumatic organ, for the sound was produced by the current of air through the pipes; the water applied serving merely to give the necessary pressure to the bellows and to regulate their action. The pipes were probably caused to sound by means of stops, perhaps resembling those on our organ, which were drawn out or pushed in. The construction was evidently but a primitive contrivance, contained in a case which could be carried by one or two persons and which was placed on a table. The highest degree of perfection which the hydraulic organ obtained with the ancients is perhaps shown in a representation on a coin of the Emperor Nero, in the British Museum. Only ten pipes are given to it, and there is no indication of any keyboard, which would probably have been shown had it existed. The man standing at the side and holding a laurel leaf in his hand is surmised to represent a victor in the exhibitions of the circus or the amphitheatre. The hydraulic organ probably was played on such occasions; and the medal containing an impression of it may have been bestowed upon the victor.