One of the illustrations I give is taken from a representation on a vase of a flute player at a musical contest. He wears a phorbia or capistrum, which is a kind of leather bandage or bridle, used in precaution lest he should burst his cheeks in blowing; and the band has two holes pierced at the mouth for the insertion separately of the pipes. The fact of the use of the pipes in the band separately is beyond question, since the actual pattern of the band exists in a relic from Cyprus in the Cesnola collection at New York, and the holes in it are not large enough to admit the bulbs, but only the tip portion as shewn here. This player, as you will notice, is playing one of the new double flutes,—not an Egyptian flute.

Female players also used the phorbia in playing. Dennis notes on a vase “an auletris with black hair, and a phorbia over the mouth, stood by the bier playing the double pipes”—thus keeping up the Egyptian custom.

The reeds are not now taken into the mouth. Drawings of the Arghool should have shown that each reed was, at the tip, tied to the pipe by a slack rambling string, for by these bits of string each reed is connected with its pipe lest it should be lost. This is shown in the Summarah drawing. Enthusiasts newly trying the Arghool are very ready to drop it, since they soon feel sick from the unpleasant sensation of the reeds and the loose bits of string in the mouth, and it is an experience one remembers.

Come with me to the Vase Rooms of the British Museum and look at some of the spoils of Time. Mr. Dennis in his beautiful work on the Vases of Etruria says “the enormous quantities of the vases that have been found in Etruscan soil, within the last fifty years alone, may be reckoned not by thousands but by myriads.”

In these rooms—and there are three large rooms devoted to these specimens of fictile art—there are some hundreds of vases. Many hours I have spent amongst them, brooding over their beauty, and wondering of the tales they told of a people long passed away and a religion once the glory of the earth. On numbers of vases flute players male and female, are depicted, sometimes three or four on one vase; and the various attitudes I observed, and the indications of purpose they betokened, led me believe that there was some meaning beyond mere ornamentation in the cocoon like bulbs of the flute heads. I examined minutely vase after vase, and discovered at length out of the whole number three vases on which were delineated players handling their flutes each in a different manner, and these conveyed clearly to my mind the conviction that the bulbs were detached pieces which the player was able to arrange. Then arose the question in my mind, “for what purpose?” You have the three pictures before you. Now it is very curious that only by means of the Greco-Etruscan art work are the subulo double flutes brought to our knowledge (for distinction, it may be well to give these bulbed flutes the name by which the Etruscan player was called); and yet the period during which this new invention was in vogue, comprises that in which Greece was at the height of her intellectual power. The age of Pericles and Phidias, of Plato and Euripides, of the rearing of the Parthenon and of the grand Temple of Jove at Olympia!

The dates of the vases of the best period, all are included between 440 and 330 B.C.; some earlier, also showing these flutes, date back fifty years more. Thousands of these recovered vases are distributed in museums and private collections, and have been of inestimable value for the insight they have afforded into the domestic life of the Greek people. Aristophanes in one of his comedies, written about 450 B.C., makes a bit of satire out of these flutes, causing Micas and another to say—comically complaining of their master—“Let us weep and wail like two flutes breathing some air of Olympos.” All that their poets and other writers told us of their flutes and flute-players fails to come home to our understanding until associated with these enduring pictures; and we know at least that they are genuine records, and that time has allowed no hand to tamper with them. It is evident that flute music exercised a fascinating influence over these people; the player is present alike in scenes of mirth and revelry, in solemn ceremonials and in funeral procession; and yet we are so far away in thought culture and sentiment, that we are unable to imagine what that music was that it could give such delight, and be accounted one of life’s chiefest luxuries. Here, beyond question, we have the testimony of the eye that it was so; and we know that the natural laws of sounding pipes are the same to-day as yesterday, and the limits of capability of four or six holes allowed but a very narrow range for melody.

The player was called by the Etruscans “Subulone”: by the Greeks “Auletris” and the flutes known as “Auloi.” The pipes were formed of boxwood, lotus wood and sycamore.

Was it on these double flutes that Lamia played and so ’witched the world that it built a temple to her, and paid divine honours to her name? Were these the flutes spoken of as being able to play in three modes, the famed flutes, the invention of Pronomus the Theban? The date given of Pronomus is given as about 440 B.C., and is that of the period of these vases.

The
Satyr’s
Hands
and
Flutes.