Concerning music (9-12)

Music then received its first constitution from Terpander at Sparta. Of the second constitution, Thaletas the Gortinean, Xenodamus the Cytherean, Xenocritus the Locrian, Polymnestus the Colophonian, and Sacadas the Argive were deservedly acknowledged to be the authors. For these, having introduced the Gymnopaediae into Lacedaemon, settled the so-called Apodeixeis (or Exhibitions)

Polymnestus also composed nomes for flute-music; but in the Orthian nome he made use of his lyric vein, as the students in harmony declare. But in this we cannot be positive, because we have nothing of certainty concerning it from antiquity; and whether Thaletas of Crete was a composer of hymns is much doubted. For Glaucus, asserting Thaletas to be born after Archilochus, says that he imitated the odes of Archilochus, only he made them longer, and used the Paeonic and Cretic rhythm, which neither Archilochus nor Orpheus nor Terpander ever did; for Thaletas learned these from Olympus, and became a good poet besides. As for Xenocritus the Locrian from Italy, it is much questioned whether he was a maker of paeans or not, as being one that always took heroic subjects with dramatic action for his verses, for which reason some there were who called his arguments Dithyrambic. More over, Glaucus asserts Thaletas to have preceded him in time.

Olympus, by the report of Aristoxenus, is supposed by the musicians to have been the inventor of the enharmonic species of music; for before him there was no other than the diatonic and chromatic. And it is thought that the invention of the enharmonic species was thus brought

These were the beginnings of enharmonic music; afterwards the semitone was also divided, as well in the Phrygian as Lydian moods. But Olympus seems to have advanced music by producing something never known or heard of before, and to have gained to himself the honor of being the most excellent, not only in the Grecian but in all other music.

Let us now proceed to rhythms; for there were several varieties of these, as well in musical as in rhythmical composition. And here Terpander, among all those novelties with which he adorned music, introduced an elegant manner, that gave it much life. After him, beside the Terpandrian, which he did not relinquish, Polymnestus brought in use another of his own, retaining however the former elegant manner, as did also Thaletas and Sacadas. Other innovations were also made by Alkman and Stesichorus, who nevertheless receded not from the ancient forms. But Crexus, Timotheus, and Philoxenus, and those other poets of the same age, growing more arrogant and studious of novelty, affected those other manners now called Philanthropic and Thematic. For now the fewness of strings and the plainness and majesty of the old music are looked upon as absolutely out of date.