But horns and trumpets are the invention of the Etrurians. But Metrodorus the Chian, in his history of the Affairs of Troy, says that Marsyas invented the pipe and flute at Celænæ, when all his predecessors had played on a single reed. But Euphorion the epic poet, in his treatise on the Modulation of Songs, says that Mercury invented the pipe which consists of one single reed; but that some say that Seuthes and Ronaces the Medes did so; and that Sileuus invented the pipe which is made of many reeds, and that Marsyas invented that one which is joined together with wax.
83. This then, O my word-hunting Ulpian, is what you may learn from us Alexandrians, who are very fond of the music of the monaulos. For you do not know that Menecles the Barcæan compiler, and also that Andron, in his Chronicles, him of Alexandria I mean, assert that it is the Alexandrians who instructed all the Greeks and the barbarians, when the former encyclic mode of education began to fail, on account of the incessant commotions which took place in the times of the successors of Alexander. There was subsequently a regeneration of all sorts of learning in the time of Ptolemy the seventh king of Egypt, the one who was properly called by the
[[286]]Alexandrians Cacergetes; for he having murdered many of the Alexandrians, and banished no small number of those who had grown up to manhood with his brother, filled all the islands and cities with men learned in grammar, and philosophy, and geometry, with musicians, and painters, and schoolmasters, and physicians, and men of all kinds of trades and professions; who, being driven by poverty to teach what they knew, produced a great number of celebrated pupils.
84. But music was a favourite amusement of all the Greeks of old time; on which account also skill in playing the flute was much aimed at. Accordingly, Chamæleon of Heraclia, in his book entitled Protrepticus, says that the Lacedæmonians and Thebans all learned to play on the flute, and the inhabitants of Heraclea in Pontus devoted themselves to the same study down to his own time. And that so did the most illustrious of the Athenians, Callias the son of Hipponicus, and Critias the son of Callæschrus. But Duris, in his treatise on Euripides and Sophocles, says that Alcibiades learnt music, not of any ordinary master, but of Pronomus, who had the very highest reputation in that line. And Aristoxenus says that Epaminondas the Theban learnt to play the flute of Olympiodorus and Orthagoras. And likewise, many of the Pythagoreans practised the art of flute-playing, as Euphranor, and Archytas, and Philolaus, and many others. But Euphranor has also left behind an essay on Flutes, and so too has Archytas. And Aristophanes shows us, in his Daitaleis, the great eagerness with which men applied themselves to this study, when he says—
I who am wasted quite away
In the study of flutes and harps,
Am I now to be sent to dig?
And Phrynichus, in his Ephialtes, says—
But were not you the man who taught him once
To play upon the flute and well-strung harp?
And Epicharmus, in his Muses, says that Minerva played a martial strain to the Dioscuri. And Ion, in his Phœnician, or Cæneus, calls the flute a cock, speaking thus:—
The cock then sang the Greeks a Lydian hymn.
And also, in his Garrison, he calls the pipe the Idæan cock, using the following expression:—