Scan 119
Researches into the early history of the violin family, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 109. See the scan on archive.org.
1nor tuning-peg indicated. The latter were probably situated at the back of the neck, which would account for their not being shown. The thin lines representing the strings may have become obliterated in the course of time. Perhaps the sculpture was originally coloured, as appears to have been the case with many of the Assyrian bas-reliefs. To judge from the two appendages on the neck of the instrument, it was probably two-stringed. Moreover, the British Museum contains some small Assyrian images, formed of baked clay, which represent female players on a similar instrument. As these figures are supposed to be idols, it may perhaps therefrom be surmised that this sort of lute was especially appreciated by the Assyrians. Howbeit, there remains hardly a doubt that the instrument was well known in different districts of Western Asia about a thousand years before our Christian era, and consequently at about the time of David and Solomon. If this was the case, the Greeks and Romans also cannot have been unacquainted with it. At all events, they must have observed its representations on the Egyptian sculptures and paintings, although they may not have cared much to construct similar stringed instruments. If a sort of lute had been especially popular with the Romans, we should probably have had transmitted to us some illustrations and descriptions of the instrument.
3In short, it appears highly probable that before the Arabs introduced into Europe their el-'oud, or lute, and their rebab, or rebec, the European nations possessed already a stringed instrument provided with a neck, and somewhat resembling in shape the violin, or, rather, the guitar. However, the opinion expressed by some of our musical historians, that the Roman fidicula had such a neck, appears nevertheless questionable. More likely the designation fidicula was occasionally used for stringed instruments in general, because it signifies also a string. There are several instances on record in which a name apparently belonging to a certain musical instrument was applied to a whole class of instruments. At the present day, Englishmen not unfrequently call a quartet of stringed instruments simply "the strings." Considering that the Latin dictionaries give fidiculae sonantes for "stringed
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