M. L. West

Ancient Greek Music

Ancient Greece was permeated by music, and the literature teems with musical allusions. For most readers the subject has remained a closed book. Here at last is a clear, comprehensive account that presupposes no special knowledge of music. Topics covered include the place of music in Greek life; instruments; rhythm; tempo; modes and scales; melodic construction; form; ancient theory and notation; and historical development. Thirty surviving examples of Greek music are presented in modern transcription with analysis, and the book is fully illustrated. A brief Epilogue sets Greek music in the wider context in a border zone between Afro-Asiatic and European culture.

The rise of the Greek epic

My title is familiar as that of a book, and my subject may be thought to call for one. I hope in due course to explore the genesis of the Homeric poems in that format, and what I have to say here may take its place there in a maturer form (wiser, fatter). For the moment I offer merely a provisional attempt to trace out the stages by which the epic tradition developed, stopping short of any discussion of the Iliad and Odyssey themselves. Any such attempt necessarily involves a certain amount of rehearsal of familiar arguments, and, if it is to be plausible, a fair measure of concurrence in familiar conclusions. But conclusions that are familiar are sometimes also controversial, and can be strengthened against their assailants by a fresh discussion; and I have certain doctrines of my own that are best presented in the context of a broad synthesis.

The singing of Homer and the modes of early Greek music

In their invocations of the Muses the early epic poets use indifferently verbs meaning ‘tell’, ‘speak of ’ (ἔννeπe, ἔσπeτe, eἰπέ, eἴπατe) and the verb which we normally translate as ‘sing ’ (ἄeιδe, ἀeίδeο, ἀeίσατe) When they refer directly to their own performance they may use the non-committal μνήσομαι, or ἐρέω, ἐνισπeῖν but more often it is άeίδω, ἄρχομ ἀeίδeιν or something of the sort; and they will pray for good ἀοιδή or hope for reward from it. We cannot make a distinction between two styles of performance, one characterized as ἀeίδeιν the other as ἐνέπeιν the Iliad begins μῆνιν ἄeιδe θeά but later has ἔσπeτe νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι; Hesiod moves straight from χαίρeτe τέκνα Διός , δότe δ᾿ ἱμeρόeσσαν ἀοιδήν to eἴπατe δ᾿ ὡς . . . ταῦτά μοι ἔσπeτe Μοῦσαι . . . καὶ eἴπατe (Th. 104–15); the author of the Hymn to Pan begins ἔννeπe Μοῦσα and ends ἴλαμαι δέ σ᾿ ἀοιδῇ . . . καὶ σeῖο καὶ ἄλλης μνήσομ᾿ ἀοιδῆς .

The Prometheus trilogy

The evidence against the Aeschylean authorship of the Prometheus is now overwhelming; or so it appears to me, considering the question without preconception and in that hebdomad of life in which, according to Solon, πeρὶ πἀντα καταρτύeται νὀος ἀνδρὀς. Those who still maintain that the play is by Aeschylus may probably be divided into three categories: those who have not read Mark Griffiths recent book on the subject; those who are incapable of unlearning anything they grew up believing, at any rate concerning such an important matter; and those who, while not constitutionally incapable of conversion, nor unimpressed by the evidence, yet have a rooted feeling, which they are unwilling to discount, that the play is like Aeschylus. The first group is easy to prescribe for. The second is incurable. To the third I would say that although instinct may certainly on occasion be worth a hundred arguments, its reliability as a pointer to the truth depends on its sources. When it represents a rational calculation performed by the subconscious from considerations or observations of which the conscious mind has not yet taken stock, so that upon reflection it can be put on an objective basis, well and good. There is no doubt an element of such calculation in the present case, for of course the Prometheus does have some Aeschylean features.

'Eumelos': a Corinthian epic cycle?

The author surveys the evidence for the three antiquarian epics commonly ascribed to Eumelos: the Titanomachy, Korinthiaka and Europia. He elucidates and restores details, and endeavours to grasp their poets? objectives. He argues that they were products of the Corinthian-Sikyonian sphere, and to a degree mutually complementary; that they were composed between the late seventh and the late sixth century, considerably after the supposed lifetime of Eumelos; and that they were perhaps attributed to him for lack of other claimants, he being famous as the Corinthian poet of the Messenians? treasured Prosodion.

Greek Poetry 2000–700 B.C.

They used to believe that mankind began in 4004 B.C. and the Greeks in 776. We now know that these last five thousand years during which man has left written record of himself are but a minute fraction of the time he has spent developing his culture. We now understand that the evolution of human society, its laws and customs, its economics, its religious practices, its games, its languages, is a very slow process, to be measured in millennia. In the case of Greek religious usage it is now appreciated that it has its roots not in Mycenaean but in Palaeolithic times. As for Greek poetry, comparative studies have shown that it goes back by a continuous tradition to Indo-European poetry.

The Contest of Homer and Hesiod

The work of many scholars in the last hundred years has helped us to understand the nature and origins of the treatise which we know for short as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod . The present state of knowledge may be summed up as follows. The work in its extant form dates from the Antonine period, but much of it was taken over bodily from an earlier source, thought to be the Movaelov of Alcidamas. Some of the verses exchanged in the contest were current even earlier, and some scholars have supposed that the story of a contest went back to the fifth, sixth, or even eighth century; but this is now much doubted.

Three Presocratic Cosmologies

A Papyrus commentary on Alcman published in 19571 brings us news of a poem in which Alcman “physiologized”. The lemmata and commentary together witness to a semi-philosophical cosmogony unlike any other hitherto known from Greece. The evidence is meagre, but it seems worth while to see what can be made of it; for it is perhaps possible to go a little farther than has so far been done.

Further Greek epigrams : epigrams before A.D. 50 from the Greek anthology and other sources, not included in "Hellenistic epigrams" or "The garland of Philip"

1. Authentic ascriptions 2. Epigrams ascribed to famous names of the pre-Alexandrian era 3. From the Palatine and Planudean Anthologies 4. From other sources 5. Leonides of Alexandria 6. Nicodemus of Heraclea 6. Tiberius Ilus 7. Epigrams by the Imperial Romans.

The Cosmology of ‘Hippocrates’, De Hebdomadibus

Several of the treatises and lectures that make up the Hippocratic corpus begin with more or less extended statements about the physical composition and operation of the world at large, and approach the study of human physiology from this angle. We see this, for example, in De Natwra Hominis , De Flatibus, De Carnibus, De Victu ; it was the approach of Alcmaeon of Croton, Diogenes of Apollonia, and according to Plato ( Phaedr . 270 c) of Hippocrates himself. The work known as De Hebdomadibus would appear to be a prime example of the type. The first twelve chapters are cosmological. They are dominated by two ideas: that everything in nature is arranged in groups of seven, and that the human body is constructed on the same pattern as the whole world. In the later part of the book (13–52) we pass to the subject of fevers, their causation and treatment. But as Roscher observed, the cosmology and the pathology do not belong together.