Striking loud the twentieth string,
Leucaspis, as the rapid hour
Leads you to youth's and beauty's flower.
But Ion of Chios, in his Omphale, speaks of it as if it were a species of flute, in the following words—
And let the Lydian flute, the magadis,
Breathe its sweet sounds, and lead the tuneful song.
MUSIC.
And Aristarchus the grammarian, (a man whom Panætius the Rhodian philosopher used to call the Prophet, because he could so easily divine the meanings of poems,) when explaining this verse, affirms that the magadis was a kind of flute: though Aristoxenus does not say so either in his treatise on the Flute-players or in that on Flutes and other Musical Instruments; nor does Archestratus either,—and he also wrote two books on Flute-players; nor has Pyrrhander said so in his work on Flute-players; nor Phillis the Delian,—for he also wrote a treatise on Flute-players, and so did Euphranor. But Tryphon, in the second book of his essay on Names, speaks thus—"The flute called magadis." And in another place he says—"The magadis gives a shrill and deep tone at the same time, as Anaxandrides intimates in his Man fighting in heavy Armour, where we find the line—
I will speak to you like a magadis,
In soft and powerful sounds at the same time.