Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Amphion

by John Weeks Moore

Amphion. The son of Antiope, and renowned for his eloquence and skill in music. The ancients say he was instructed by Mercury, and that the magic of his lyre so charmed the stones, that they arranged themselves in architectural order, and formed the walls of Thebes.

"Amphion too, as story goes, could call Obedient stones to make the Theban wall. He led them as he pleased; the rocks obeyed, And danced in order Si the tunes he played."

Amphion was a Theban, who, if he did not perform all the wonderful things attributed to him, certainly softened, by the sound of his lyre, the savage manners of the first inhabitants of Greece, and engaged them to build towns. He invented the Lydian measure.