In earlier times there was a flute appropriated to each mode, or grand division of the national music, but afterwards Pronomos of Thebes,[[1120]] invented one equally well suited to every mode. Even the manufacture of mouth-pieces, and flute-cases formed a considerable branch of industry. The materials from which the above instruments were chiefly made, were, in addition to those already mentioned, branches of the elder tree and dwarf laurel, bones of asses and kids, ivory and silver.[[1121]] Organs, and hydraulic organs, the latter invented by the Alexandrian barber Ctesibios, to whom antiquity was likewise indebted for the knowledge of the pump, were reckoned by the ancients among wind-instruments.[[1122]]
Of stringed-instruments the most common was the lyre,[[1123]] manufactured from many kinds of fine wood, and sometimes of ivory.[[1124]] The bridge was usually of ilex.[[1125]] The cithara,[[1126]] introduced at Athens by Phrynis,[[1127]] was made sometimes of horn with wooden pegs,[[1128]] though mention occurs of one formed entirely of solid gold, adorned with figures in relief of the Muses, Orpheus, and Apollo, and thickly studded with emeralds and other precious stones.[[1129]] The magadis,[[1130]] sometimes reckoned among wind-instruments, was unquestionably stringed, since we find Timotheus, accused at Sparta of innovating in the number of its chords, pointing out to his accuser an ancient statue of Apollo, in which the god was represented playing on a magadis with an equal number.[[1131]] In proof of its antiquity it may be remarked, that Lesbothemis, a sculptor, who flourished in a remote age at Mytilene, where this instrument was always in high favour,[[1132]] represented one of the Muses with the magadis in her hand. The pectis, said to have been an invention of Sappho, and by some confounded with the magadis, ought rather perhaps to be regarded as a modification of that instrument.[[1133]] The epigoneion, so called from its inventor Epigonos, by birth an Ambraciot, though afterwards made a citizen of Sicyon, was a kind of harp with forty strings, resembling, probably, those many-chorded instruments represented on the monuments of Egypt and Ethiopia. This Epigonos, is said to have been the first person who in playing dispensed with the use of the plectron.[[1134]] The ancient Arabs forestalled Signor Paganini, and drew a world of sweet sounds from an instrument of one chord:[[1135]] the Assyrians had their pandoura, with three strings.[[1136]] Among the Scythians was found the pentachordon, stringed with thongs of raw bull-hide, and played on by a plectron of goat’s hoof. The Libyans, more especially the Troglodytes, filled their caverns with the music of the psithura, otherwise called the ascaron, an instrument a cubit square, which produced sounds resembling the tinkling of castanets. Cantharos attributes its invention to the Thracians. To these we may add the drum, the tambourine,[[1137]] with cymbals, and castanets, sometimes of brass, and sometimes of shells, played on by women in honour of Artemis.
The business of the potter[[1138]] was held in considerable estimation among the Greeks, so that several celebrated cities rivalled each other in their productions. Among these, Athens,[[1139]] Samos, and Rhodes held the first rank.[[1140]] Even the Bœotian Aulis obtained some degree of reputation for its earthenware.[[1141]] But that made at Kolias,[[1142]] in Attica, from the clay there found, and richly painted with figures in minium, appears to have been the most beautiful known to antiquity.
The number of rough articles produced was prodigious, seeing that oil, and wine, and salt-fish, and pickles, and a variety of other commodities were exported in jars; while almost all culinary operations were carried on in earthern vessels. Such of these as found their way to Egypt, after the conquest of that country by the Persians, were filled with Nile water, and transported into the desert, on camels, to slake the thirst of the wayfarers on that arid waste.[[1143]] Perhaps, the largest articles of earthenware, however, were the corn-jars, some of which are said to have contained nearly a quarter of grain, in lieu of which plaited corbels were sometimes used.[[1144]] Much art and elegance was displayed in the forms, varnishing, and painting of fictile vases, some of which, of light and graceful contour, were made without bottoms, wholly for ornament.[[1145]] The colours employed in the painting of vases, more particularly those intended to hold the ashes of the dead, were generally light and durable; and the ease and beauty of the figures prove that the ancient potters paid great attention to the arts of design. The ornaments were extremely various, sometimes consisting of representations of the gods, as Heracles, Pan, or the genii, sometimes of oakleaves, garlands, or festoons, arranged with taste and elegance.[[1146]] Athenæus speaks of a kind of porcelain called Rhossican,[[1147]] covered with the forms of flowers, upon which Cleopatra expended five minæ per day. Another branch of the potter’s business consisted in the manufacturing of lamps,[[1148]] which were so generally in use, that, throughout the Greek and the Roman world, the sites of cities, the ruins of temples, and the sepulchral chambers excavated beneath the earth, lavishly abound with them, entire or in fragments.[[1149]] Hyperbolos is said to have amassed a considerable fortune by selling lamps of an inferior quality.[[1150]] Wax-candles, however, were likewise in use, at least in later ages,[[1151]] and with the same materials they fashioned artificial pomegranates and other ornaments, together with small portable images of animals, men, and gods, which, like our figures of plaster of Paris, were sold, as well as those of clay, about the streets. Some notion, too, may be formed of the price, since we find that a figure of Eros fetched a drachma.[[1152]]
The manufacture of glass[[1153]] was carried to a very high degree of perfection among the ancients.[[1154]] They understood the methods of blowing, cutting, and engraving on it; could stain it of every rich and brilliant colour so as to imitate the most precious gems,[[1155]] from the ruby and the amethyst to the turquoise and the beryl; they could fashion it into jars, and bowls, and vases, exhibiting all the various hues of the peacock’s train, which, like shot-silks and the breast of the dove, exhibited fresh tints in every different light,—fading, quivering, and melting into each other as the eye changed its point of view.[[1156]] Squares of glass were produced, perfectly polished and transparent without, but containing figures of various colours in their interior.[[1157]] Glass, likewise, was wrought into bassi and alti rilievi, and cast, as gems were cut, into cameos.[[1158]] The manufacturers of Alexandria excelled in the working of glass,[[1159]] with which they skilfully imitated all kinds of earthenware, fabricating cups of every known form.
It is added, moreover, that a certain kind of earth was found in Egypt, without which the best kind of coloured glass[[1160]] could not be produced. Petronius informs us, that, in the reign of Tiberius, a skilful experimentalist discovered the art of rendering this substance malleable, but that the emperor, from some freak of tyranny, put the man to death, and thus his secret was lost to the world.[[1161]] A similar act of cruelty was perpetrated by the public authorities at Dantzic, who, in the seventeenth century, caused an able mechanician, who had invented a superior kind of ribbon-loom, to be strangled.[[1162]]
[1003]. Winkel. Hist. de l’Art. i. 37.
[1004]. Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Pac. 299.
[1005]. Plato de Rep. t. vi. p. 15. Winkel. Hist. de l’Art, ii. 544. Goguet. iv. 11. Theoph. de Lapid. 48.