§ 34. Credibility of Aristides Quintilianus.
But what weight can be given to Aristides as an authority on the music of the time of Plato? The answer to this question depends upon several considerations.
1. The date of Aristides is unknown. He is certainly later than Cicero, since he quotes the De Republica (p. 70 Meib.). From the circumstance that he makes no reference to the musical innovations of Ptolemy it has been supposed that he was earlier than that writer. But, as Aristides usually confines himself to the theory of Aristoxenus and his school, the argument from silence is not of much value. On the other hand he gives a scheme of notation containing two characters,
and
, which extend the scale two successive semi-tones beyond the lowest point of the notation given by Alypius [43]. For this reason it is probable that Aristides is one of the latest of the writers on ancient music.
2. The manner in which Aristides introduces his information about the Platonic Modes is highly suspicious. He has been describing the various divisions of the tetrachord according to the theory of Aristoxenus, and adds that there were anciently other divisions in use. So far Aristides is doubtless right, since Aristoxenus himself says that the divisions of the tetrachord are theoretically infinite in number (p. 26 Meib.),—that it is possible, for example, to combine the Parhypatê of the Soft Chromatic with the Lichanos of the Diatonic (p. 52 Meib.). But all this concerns the genus of the scale, and has nothing to do with the species of the Octave, with which Aristides proceeds to connect it. It follows either that there is some confusion in the text, or that Aristides was compiling from sources which he did not understand.