Fig. 64.
Plato and Plutarch both comment upon many-stringed lyres, condemning their use and advocating a return to the ancient simplicity. Old Pausanias, who wrote at a much later period “a Description of Greece,” shews himself familiar with the many-stringed by a simile he uses, stating that “in Egypt he had seen the pyramids, had beheld with wonder the colossal statue of Memnon at Thebes, and had heard the musical sound, like the breaking of a lyre string, which the statue emitted at sunrise.” The breaking of strings is thus known to be an old-world trouble, and no doubt Pausanias had often heard the sound, else this reference would not have come to him so naturally as a fitting illustration; only a large or many stringed-lyre would give a noticeably musical sound; an instrument with short strings equal to our violin strings would give but a brief snap, not in any degree a musical sound. Desiring a personal experience I suggested to a friend a realistic test, and he kindly strained a string of his violoncello to breaking point. So we knew that the sound heard in this catastrophic incident of to-day, was certainly not of the nature that the great travellers of past days were attracted to as one of the wonders of the world. A many stringed harp somewhat of the capacity of modern harps would, however, under the shock communicate a thrill over the whole range, finding out a sympathetic resonance from vibration of those strings that happened to be in accord with the pitch of the sounding-body, and this kind of response on the breaking of a string was probably that which furnished old Pausanias’s memory with so pertinent a simile. Whoever has heard one of the higher pianoforte strings break will understand fairly enough the nature of the sound. The statue was 69 feet high, and it was reared by Amenhotep III., about 1450 B.C.
With testimony so absolute from an ear-witness, the Memnon is no fable. Silent that voice has been through many centuries, yet we may well believe that in older days, ere time had worked its inevitable changes, the sounds heard were in resemblance more truly vocal; and although then mysterious to hearers, now under science such musical vibrations are easy of explanation as a natural phenomenon.
The wonder-inspiring statue is still seated there,
“moulded in colossal calm,”
looking across that desert-destined land which remaineth for ever, as Shelley named it,—
“a desolation deified.”
Seeking an example of Apollo’s lyre, as it existed when Greek art was at its highest period, I found it, I think, in a marble relief carved by the hand of Praxiteles; it is an authentic witness of the form of the lyre in his day, and it seems to carry out the description given of the lyre discovered by Lord Elgin (see page [319]). The artist gives a representation of the lyre as he saw it, and as no doubt used in the worship of the ever-youthful Sun-God.
This marble is in the National Museum at Athens. It was found at Mantinea, in Arcadia, and it represents the contest of Apollo and Marsyas; Apollo on the lyre and Marsyas on the flutes, or double pipes. The marble has been finely photographed by the well-known M. Rhomaides, of Athens, an enthusiast in his art. I copy this for the Apollo; the quiet dignity of the seated figure is remarkable. According to proportionate relation, the instrument may be estimated as being about twenty-six or twenty-seven inches in height, and the acting length of the strings about eighteen or twenty inches, the frame about two inches deep, with the interior hollow, so that although the strings should be only plucked by the fingers, the instrument we should expect would give a good and a rich resonance. The strings, seven in number, being each tuned separately by their rollers or rings.