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Search results for phi,761 in Adler number:
Headword:
Phrunis
Adler number: phi,761
Translated headword: Phrynis
Vetting Status: high
Translation: A cithara-singer, of Mitylene, who was thought to have been the first to play the cithara among the Athenians and to have won a victory at the Panathenaea in the archonship of
Callias.[1] He was a pupil of Aristoclidas.[2] Aristoclidas was in descent from
Terpander,[3] and flourished in Greece at the time of the Persian War, a famous cithara-player. Taking Phrynis when the latter was a pipe-singer he taught him to play the cithara.
Ister in his work the Songwriters[4] says that Phrynis was a Lesbian, the son of Canops, and that he was a cook for the tyrant Hieron[5] and was given with many others to Aristoclidas. These seem like random inventions, for if he had been born a slave and cook of Hieron, the comic playwrights would not have been silent, often mentioning the innovations he made, bending the harmonics of song from its ancient form.[6]
Phrunis, kitharôidos, Mitulênaios: hos edokei prôtos kitharisai par' Athênaiois kai nikêsai Panathênaia epi Kalliou archontos. ên de Aristokleidou mathêtês. ho de Aristokleidês to genos ên apo Terpandrou: êkmase de en têi Helladi kata ta Mêdika, eudokimos kitharistês. paralabôn de ton Phrunin aulôidounta kitharizein edidaxen. Istros de en tois epigraphomenois Melopoiois ton Phrunin Lesbion phêsi, Kanôpos huion: touton de Hierônos tou turannou mageiron onta dothênai sun allois pollois Aristokleidêi. tauta de schediois eoiken ei gar ên gegonôs doulos kai mageiros Hierônos, ouk an esiôpôn hoi kômikoi, pollakis autou memnêmenoi eph' hois ekainourgêse, kataklasas tên ôidên para to archaion.
Notes:
From a scholion on
Aristophanes, Clouds 971, where this individual is mentioned in passing.
Phrynis of Mitylene (on
Lesbos) ranks high among the inventors of the 'new music' of the 'new dithyramb' in the 5th. Century BC. By cithara is probably meant the new 12-stringed instrument invented by
Melanippides of
Melos (
mu 454) in the mid-5th. Century. Besides being a piper and singer to the cithara Phrynis was known as a writer of dithyrambs; see
delta 1029.
[1] This archonship, 456/5, is not a year of the Great Panathenaea; it is unanimously changed to that of
Callimachus, 446/5 (J.A. Davison,
JHS 78 (1958) 40f.).
[2] For Aristoclidas of
Lesbos see RE 2.933 'Aristokleidas(5)'.
[3]
Terpander (
tau 354, cf.
mu 701,
nu 478,
omicron 475,
alpha 1710) invented the older 7-stringed instrument, allowing the 2 tetrachords of the enharmonic scale (the basis of all stringed music until the generation of Phrynis), and the last of the seven canonical modes or nomes, the Mixolydian.
[4]
Ister (OCD(4) 749) was an Atthidographer of the 3rd. Century BC. (See FGrH 334, where this item is F50.)
[5] Tyrant of
Gela (485-478) and Syracuse (478-466) in
Sicily: see OCD(4) 683, s.v. Hieron I.
[6] This last phrase is from
Clouds, where
Aristophanes writes in derogatory fashion of his modifications of the enharmonic attunement or harmony (
alpha 3977) of music and song in the traditional fashion of
Terpander. We cannot be certain of the exact modifications implied by the verb here
katakla/w or the related
ka/mptw, but they may refer to the innovative notes of the chromatic and diatonic scales and the greater vocal range allowed by 12-stringed instruments (cf.
kappa 2647,
beta 488,
delta 1650,
chi 296).
M.L. West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford 1992) 360-1 and index s.v.
Keywords: biography; chronology; comedy; food; geography; historiography; meter and music; poetry
Translated by: Robert Dyer on 26 February 2002@04:46:01.
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