Aristoxenus

“ Those who hold that the species were the basis of the ancient Modes or harmoniai must regard the keys as derivative. Now Aristoxenus tells us, in one of the passages just quoted, that the seven species had long been recognised by theorists. If the scheme of keys was founded upon the seven species, it would at once have been complete, both in the number of the keys and in the determination of the intervals between them. But Aristoxenus also tells us that down to his time there were only six keys,—one of them not yet generally recognised,—and that their relative pitch was not settled. ”

“ But Euthyphron, the son of Heraclides Ponticus, says that he was a Cretan, for that Etea was a city of Crete.
II. And Anaxilaus says that he was an Arcadian. Hipponax also mentions him, saying, “And Myson, whom Apollo stated [50] to be the most prudent of all men.” But Aristoxenus, in his Miscellanies, says that his habits were not very different from those of Timon and Apemantus, for that he was a misanthrope. ”

“ But Aristoxenus in his work On Pythagoras and his School affirms that he died a natural death and was buried by Pythagoras in Delos; another account again is that he died of a verminous disease, that Pythagoras was also present and inquired how he was, that he thrust his finger through the doorway and exclaimed, "My skin tells its own tale," a phrase subsequently applied by the grammarians as equivalent to "getting worse," although some wrongly understand it to mean "all is going well." ”

“ This passage has a strange pathos, considering how it was penned, and how it has come down to us, tossed by the dark indifferent stream of time. The Aristoxenus who wrote it was a pupil of the Peripatetic School, born at Tarentum, and therefore familiar with the vicissitudes of Magna Græcia. The study of music was his chief preoccupation; and he used this episode in the agony of an enslaved Greek city, to point his own conservative disgust for innovations in an art of which we have no knowledge left. ”

“ For there are three things which men study, viz. quantity (i. e. loudness of sound) , tune, and rhythm (tria gar esti peri hôn skopousi, tauta d' esti megethos, harmonia, rhythmos) .' The passage is interesting as showing the value which Aristotle set upon pitch as an element of effect. And the use of harmonia in reference [Pg 16] to the pitch of the voice, and as virtually equivalent to tonos, is especially worthy of note.
§ 10. Aristoxenus.
Our next source of information is the technical writer Aristoxenus, a contemporary and pupil of Aristotle. ”

“ The main elements of the art were, (1) difference of genus,—the sub-divisions of the tetrachord which Aristoxenus and Ptolemy alike recognise, though with important discrepancies in detail; (2) difference of pitch or key; and (3) rhythm. Passing over the last, as not belonging to the subject of Harmonics, we may now say that genus and key are the only grounds of distinction which are evidently of practical importance. No others were associated with the early history of the art, with particular composers or periods, with particular instruments, or with the ethos of music. ”

“ When Aristoxenus, the musician, and some others asked him what fault he had found with Plato, and why, he answered that absolute power, amongst its many evils, was especially unfortunate in this, that none of a despot's so-called friends dare to speak their mind openly. And he himself, he said, had been by such men deprived of the friendship of Plato. A man, who thought himself witty, once tried to make a joke of Dionysius by shaking out his cloak, when he came into his presence, as is the custom before despots, to show that one has no concealed weapons ”

“ The date of this sculptor has not been ascertained precisely, Prof. E. A. Gardner gives in a guarded way 400 B.C.
Aristoxenus was a musician, the son of a musician, he came at a time when great mathematicians were engaged in battle over fine distinctions in Pythagorean systems, to them of superlative interest and importance. Aristoxenus opposed the Pythagoreans and held that “it was absurd to aim at an artificial accuracy in gratifying the ear beyond its own power of distinction,” a decision very natural, coming from a musician. ”

“ To a disciple of Aristotle, Aristoxenus, we are indebted for the first really musical work which has come down to us. It is true that the so-called Problems of Aristotle contain many of a musical character, showing that this great master observed tonal effects in a purely musical spirit, but he did not make a scientific treatise upon the art. In his Politics he has much admirable matter relating to music, and its influence upon the feelings and its office in life has hardly been better explained than by him. ”

“ And in Hipponax we find Cion, and Codalus, and Babys, from whom the proverb arose about men who play worse and worse,—"He plays worse than Babys." But Aristoxenus ascribes the invention of this harmony to Hyagnis the Phrygian.
19. But Heraclides of Pontus, in the third book of his treatise on Music, says—"Now that harmony ought not to be called Phrygian, just as it has no right either to be called Lydian. For there are three harmonies; as there are also three different races of Greeks—Dorians, Æolians, and Ionians: and accordingly there is no little difference between their manners. ”

“ There is a treatise extant bearing his name, which is, however, probably spurious, and only an abridgment of Plato's dialogue Timæus. ↑ Dicæarchus was a native of Messana, in Sicily, though he lived chiefly in Greece. He was one of the later disciples of Aristotle. He was a great geographer, politician, historian, and philosopher, and died about 285 B.C. ↑ Aristoxenus was a native of Tarentum, and also a pupil of Aristotle. We know nothing of his opinions except that he held the soul to be a harmony of the body ”

“ With him begins a long period during which Greek philosophy nearly ceased to speculate on destiny beyond the grave. It was repugnant to Peripatetic philosophy to concern itself with the existence of a soul which could be neither conceived nor defined by reason. Some of Aristotle’s immediate disciples, like Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus, or Straton of Lampsacus, the pupil of Theophrastus, agreed in denying immortality altogether ”

“ There were also many other books composed by Aston, of Crotona, and attributed to Pythagoras.
Aristoxenus asserts that Pythagoras derived the greater part of his ethical doctrines from Themistoclea, the priestess at Delphi. And Ion, of Chios, in his Victories, says that he wrote some poems and attributed them to Orpheus. They also say that the poem called the Scopiadæ is by him, which begins thus:—
Behave not shamelessly to any one. ”

“ X. But what I have said as to the heart, the blood, the brain, air, or fire being the soul, are common opinions: the others are only entertained by individuals; and, indeed, there were many among the ancients who held singular opinions on this subject, of whom the latest was Aristoxenus, a man who was both a musician and a philosopher. He maintained a certain straining of the body, like what is called harmony in music, to be the soul, and believed that, from the figure and nature of the whole body, various motions are excited, as sounds are from an instrument. ”

“ There were in all eight Aristotles: (1) our philosopher himself; (2) an Athenian statesman, [32] the author of graceful forensic speeches; (3) a scholar who commented on the Iliad; (4) a Sicilian rhetorician, who wrote a reply to the Panegyric of Isocrates; (5) a disciple of Aeschines the Socratic philosopher, surnamed Myth; (6) a native of Cyrene, who wrote upon the art of poetry; (7) a trainer of boys, mentioned by Aristoxenus in his Life of Plato; (8) an obscure grammarian, whose handbook On Redundancy is still extant.
Aristotle of Stagira had many disciples ”

“ And the rest of the Pythagoreans used to say that not all his doctrines were for all men to hear, our authority for this being Aristoxenus in the tenth book of his Rules of Pedagogy, 16. where we are also told that one of the school, Xenophilus by name, asked by some one how he could best educate his son, replied, "By making him the citizen of a well-governed state." Throughout Italy Pythagoras made many into good men and true, men too of note like the lawgivers Zaleucus and Charondas ”

“ And the men called Hilarodists (whom some people at the present day call Simodists, as Aristocles tells us in his first book on Choruses, because Simus the Magnesian was the most celebrated of all the poets of joyous songs,) frequently come under our notice. And Aristocles also gives a regular list of them in his treatise on Music, where he speaks in the following manner:—"The Magodist—but he is the same as the Lysiodist." But Aristoxenus says that Magodus is the name given to an actor who acts both male and female characters ”

“ But in our days artists make the objects of their art to be the gaining the applause of the spectators in the theatre; on which account Aristoxenus, in his book entitled Promiscuous Banquets, says—"We act in a manner similar to the people of Pæstum who dwell in the Tyrrhenian Gulf; for it happened to them, though they were originally Greeks, to have become at last completely barbarised, becoming Tyrrhenians or Romans, and to have changed their language, and all the rest of their national habits. ”

“ Ariston asked again.
"Only the Gods can answer that," Aristotle replied. "It is safe to say that what human ambition can accomplish, he will do. He was my pupil, and there are those who maintain that he knows more than his master!"
Although the philosopher spoke with a smile, there was a trace of irony in his tone that did not escape the alert Athenian.
"You hear that?" he cried, turning to Clearchus. "Here is a boy who begins by conquering his instructor. Where will he end?"
"They say he has ended already, up there among the savages," Chares said lazily. ”

“ His friends apprehending some harm from his silence, broke into the room, but he took no notice of what any of them said, till Aristander putting him in mind of the vision he had seen concerning Clitus, and the prodigy that followed, as if all had come to pass by an unavoidable fatality, he then seemed to moderate his grief. They now brought Callisthenes, the philosopher, who was the near friend of Aristotle, and Anaxarchus of Abdera, to him. Callisthenes used moral language, and gentle and soothing means, hoping to find access for words of reason, and get a hold upon the passion. ”

“ Aristoteles was the man that wrought the revolt, and he had no hard task to persuade the common people; for they were all angry with Cleomenes for not releasing them from their debts as they expected. Accordingly, obtaining fifteen hundred of Antigonus's soldiers, Aratus sailed to Epidaurus; but Aristoteles, not staying for his coming, drew out the citizens, and fought against the garrison of the castle; and Timoxenus, with the Achaeans from Sicyon, came to his assistance. ”

“ But Ariston could not hear their voices. His ears shook with the roar of the mountain. An old man was hugging a chest. Gold coins were spilling out as he ran. Another man was dragging a fainting woman. A young girl ran ahead of them with white face and streaming hair. Ariston stumbled on after this company. A great black slave came swiftly around a corner and ran into him and knocked him over, but fled on without looking back. As the Greek boy fell forward, the rough little pebbles scoured his face. ”

“ Not without reason, therefore, did Aristotle give this character of Callisthenes, that he was, indeed, a powerful speaker, but had no judgment. He acted certainly a true philosopher's part in positively refusing, as he did, to pay adoration; and by speaking out openly against that which the best and gravest of the Macedonians only repined at in secret, he delivered the Grecians and Alexander himself from a great disgrace, when the practice was given up. ”

“ Ariston ran into the court. From the heavens showered a hail of gray, soft little pebbles like beans. They burned his upturned face. They stung his bare arms. He gave a cry and ran back under the porch roof. Then he heard a shrill call above all the clattering. It came from the far end of the house. Ariston ran back into the private court. There lay Caius, his master's little sick son. His couch was under the open sky, and the gray hail was pelting down upon him. He was covering his head with his arms and wailing.
"Little master!" called Ariston. "What is it? What has happened to us?" ”

“ In the twenty-fifth year of his age, he was appointed, by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, professor of mathematics in the University of Pisa. At that period, there prevailed in all the schools a most extraordinary reverence for the writings of Aristotle, the preceptor of Alexander [136] the Great,—a philosopher who flourished in Greece, about three hundred years before the Christian era. Aristotle, by his great genius and learning, gained a wonderful ascendency over the minds of men, and became the oracle of the whole reading world for twenty centuries. ”

“ Aristotle had, at this time, reached the most prosperous period of his life. The founder and leader of the principal school of Greece, and the undisputed head of Grecian philosophy, surrounded by his numerous disciples and admirers, protected by the conqueror of Asia, and by him furnished with the means of following his favorite pursuits, and of gratifying his universal spirit of inquiry, he had, probably, little [Pg 190] to desire in order to fill up the measure of a philosopher’s ambition. But he did not continue to enjoy the favor of Alexander till the end. ”

“ O blessed gods!"
But what a sea! It roared and tossed and boiled. While Ariston looked, a ship was picked up and crushed and swallowed. The sea poured up the steep shore for hundreds of feet. Then it rushed back and left its strange fish gasping on the dry land. Great rocks fell from the sky, and steam rose up as they splashed into the water. The sun was growing fainter. The black cloud was coming on. Soon it would be dark. And then what? Ariston lay down where the last huge wave had cooled the ground. "It is all over, Caius," he murmured. "I shall never see Athens again." ”