thological traditions about early minstrels, such as Orpheus, Philammon, Chrysothemis, and others, the history of Greek music begins with Terpander. But Müller, and other scholars, have pointed out the fact, that Terpander may be connected with one of the most interesting and important of those traditions. The beautiful fable, which told how the head and lyre of Orpheus, cast upon the waves by the Thracian Maenads, were borne to Lesbos, and there received with religious honours, was doubtless an allegory, signifying the transference of the art of music to that island from Pieria, which the ancients afterwards confounded with Thrace ; a transference which is confirmed by the undoubted tradition, that Lesbos was colonised by the Aeolians of Boeotia, who were of the same race as the Pierians, and who had among them one of the earliest seats of the worship of the Muses, upon Mount Helicon. [Orpheus.] Now the very town in Lesbos, at which the grave of Orpheus was shown, and where the nightingales were said to sing most sweetly, Antissa, was the birthplace of Terpander. The presumption that he belonged to one of those families in which, according to the Greek custom, the art was handed down from father to son, is strengthened by the significancy of his name ; and this significant name, again, finds numerous parallels in the early history of other arts as well as music [Cheirisophus, Eucheirus, Eugrammus]. It is not unreasonable to suppose, further, that the race of musicians, from which Terpander was descended, preserved traditions and rules which they had originally derived from the Pierian bards. The tradition which made him a decendant of Hesiod (Suid. s. v.) furnishes incidentally a certain degree of confirmation of these views. What Terpander himself effected for the art is thus described by Müller:— "Terpander appears to have been properly the founder of Greek music. He first reduced to rule the different modes of singing which prevailed in different countries, and formed, out of these rude strains, a connected system, from which the Greek music never departed throughout all the improvements and refinements of later ages. Though endowed with an inventive mind, and the commencer of a new era of music, he attempted no more than to systematize the musical styles which existed in the tunes of Greece and Asia Minor." (Hist. of the Lit. of Anc. Greece, vol. i. p. 149.) His father's name is said to have been Derdeneus (Marm. Par. Ep. 34), while another account made him the son of Boeus, the son of Phoceus, the son of Homer. (Suid. s. v.) There can be no doubt that he was a Lesbian, and that Antissa was his native town. (Pind. ap. Ath. xiv. p. 635, d.; Marm. Par. l. c.; Plut. de Mus. 30, p. 1141, c.; Clem. Alex. Strom. vol. i. p. 309; Steph. Byz. s.v. Ἄντισσα; Suid. s. vv. Τέρπανδρος, Μετὰ Λέσβιον ᾠδύν.) The other accounts, preserved by Suidas (s. v.), which made him a native either of Arne in Boeotia, or of Cyme in Aeolis, are easily explained, and are connected with what has been already said in an interesting manner. Both Arne and Cyme were among the Aeolian cities which were said to have sent colonies to Lesbos, and both might therefore have claimed to reckon Terpander among their citizens, on the general principle by which the natives of Grecian colonies were regarded as citizens of the parent state; and, besides this, the tradition connecting him with Arne, one of the oldest cities of Boeotia, is another indication of his descent from the Pierians, while the claim of Cyme is probably connected with the traditions which derived his genealogy from Homer or from Hesiod. (See Plehn, Lesbiaca, pp. 140—142.) The statement of Diodorus (vi. 28, ap. Tzetz. Chil. i. 16) that he was a native of Methymna, must be regarded as simply a mistake.
The age at which Terpander flourished is generally considered one of the best ascertained dates of that remote period of chronology; although the still more important question of his relation, in point of time, to the other early musicians, Olympus and Clonas, and to the earliest iambic and elegiac poets, Archilochus and Callinus, and the lyric poets Tyrtaeus and Alcman, is allowed to present very great difficulties. As to the first point, C. 0. Müller says that "it is one of the most certain dates of the more[1] ancient chronology, that in the 26th Olympiad (B. C. 676) musical contests were first introduced at the feast of Apollo Carneius [at Sparta], and at their first celebration Terpander was crowned victor." (Hist. Lit. Anc. Greece, vol. i. p. 150, vol. i. p. 268 of the German; comp. Dor. b. iv. c. 6. § 1; and Mr. Grote echoes the statement, that "this is one of the best ascertained points among the obscure chronology of the seventh century" (Hist. of Greece, vol. iv. p. 102); and in the two great chronological works of Clinton and Fischer (s. a. 676), the date is laid down as certain.) The ancient authorities for this statement are Heilanicus (Athen. xiv. p. 635, f., Fr. 122, ed. Car. Müller, Frag. Hist. vol. i. p. 627, in Didot's Bibliotheca), and Sosibius the Lacedaemonian (Ath. l.c. Fr. 3, ed. Müller, ibid. vol. ii. p. 625); of whom the former gives us only the fact, that Terpander was the first victor at the Carneia, without the date; and the latter gives us only the date of the institution of the Carneia, without mentioning the victory of Terpander: the combination of the two statements, on which the force of the chronological argument rests, is made by Athenaeus, whose only object, however, in making it is to prove that Terpander was older than Anacreon; and who, in the very same sentence, quotes the statement of Hieronymus (de Poetis), that Terpander was contemporary with Lycurgus. Mr. Grote says (p. 103, note), "That Terpander was victor at the Spartan festival of the Karneia, in 676, B.C., may well have been derived by Hellanikus from the Spartan registers;" and a similar meaning has been put upon the phrase used by Athenaeus, ὡς Ἑλλάνικος ἱστορεῖ, ἔν τε τοῖς ἐμμέτροις Καρνεονίκαις, κἀν τοῖς καταλογάδην: but, granting this supposition its full force, Heilanicus does not say that Terpander was victor "in 676, B .C.;" but he does give us, in another fragment, a date irreconcileable with this, namely, that Terpander flourished in the time of Midas. (Clem. Alex. Strom. vol. i. p. 398, Potter; Fr. 123, ed. Müller. l. c.) The date 676, B. C., for the institution of the Carneia, therefore, rests alone on the testimony of Sosibius, for it can hardly be doubted that the same date, as given by Africanus (Euseb. Chron. pars i. 0l. 26. p. 144, ed. Mai, vol. i. p. 285, ed. Aucher) was copied from
the χρόνων ἀναγραφή of Sosibius. Still Sosibius
- ↑ Der ältern Chronologie, not, as the English translator gives it, ancient chronology, as if Müller meant the whole range of ancient chronology.
