Concerning music (16-20)

The mixed Lydian moves the affections, and is fit for tragedies. This mood, as Aristoxenus alleges, was invented by Sappho, from whom the tragedians learned it and joined it with the Doric. The one becomes a majestic, lofty style, the other mollifies and stirs to pity; both which are the properties of tragedy. The history of music, however, made Pythoclides the flute-player to be the author of it; and Lysis reports that Lamprocles the Athenian, finding that the diazeuxis (or separation of two tetrachords) was not where almost all others thought it had been, but toward the treble, made such a scheme as is now from paramese to the highest hypate. But for the softer Lydian, being contrary to the mixed Lydian and like the Ionian, they say it was invented by Damon the Athenian.

But as for those sorts of harmony, the one being

Moreover, the ancients well understood all the sorts of styles, although they used but few. For it was not their ignorance that confined them to such narrow instruments and so few strings; nor was it out of ignorance that Olympus and Terpander and those that came after them would not admit of larger instruments and more variety of strings. This is manifest from the poems of Olympus and Terpander and all those that were their imitators. For, being plain and without any more than three strings, these so far excelled those that were more numerously strung, insomuch that none could imitate Olympus’s play; and they were all inferior to him when they betook themselves to their polychords.

Then again, that the ancients did not through ignorance abstain from the third string in the spondaic style, their use of it in play makes apparent. For had they not known the use of it, they would never have struck it in harmony with parhypate; but the elegancy and gravity that attended the spondaic style by omitting the third string induced them to transfer the music to paranete. The same reason may serve for nete; for this in play they struck in concord to mese, but in discord to paranete, although in song it did not seem to them proper to the slow spondaic motion. And not only did they do this, but they did the same with nete of the conjunct heptachords; for in play they struck it in concord to mese and lichanos, and in discord to paranete and parhypate;[*] but in singing those touches were no way allowable, as being ungrateful to the ear and shaming the performer. As certain it is from the Phrygians that Olympus and his followers were not ignorant of the third string; for they made use of it not only in pulsation, but in their hymns to the Mother of the Gods and several other Phrygian songs. Nor is it less apparent, with regard to the ὑπάται, that they never abstained for want of skill from that tetrachord in the Dorian mood; indeed in other moods they knowingly made use of it, but removed it from the Dorian mood to preserve its elegant gravity.

The same thing was done also by the tragedians. For the tragedians have never to this day used either the chromatic or the enharmonic scale; while the lyre, many generations older than tragedy, used them from the very beginning. Now that the chromatic was more ancient than the enharmonic is plain. For we must necessarily account it of greater antiquity, according to the custom and use of men themselves; otherwise it cannot be said that