Books › The history of the violin, and other instruments played on with the bow from the remotest times to the present. Also, an account of the principal makers, English and foreign, with numerous illustrations, 1864 › scan 33
Scan 33
The history of the violin, and other instruments played on with the bow from the remotest times to the present. Also, an account of the principal makers, English and foreign, with numerous illustrations, 1864
4 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 13. See the scan on archive.org.
1poems generally attributed to him, as modern progress supposes them to be of a later date; just as Babrius supplants our old friend Æsop. Horace also mentions the barbiton.
3The epigonium and magadis have been named as the originals of the viol and violin, but the former appears to have been of the lute or harp class, having forty strings, and an instrument called the simicon had thirty-five; while, as to the magadis, according to the Supplement to Montfaucon, it is not even agreed what the instrument was; whether a flute, or of the guitar class, and if so, whether it had twenty strings or less—that the pectis was the same as the magadis, and the dicord the same as the pectis; but that the matter was altogether uncertain. Apollodorus says it was the same as the psalterium. Some further particulars will be found in "Musonii Philosophi Opus de Luxu Græcorum," in the eighth volume of Gronovius's "Thesaurus," including the scindaphos, pariambos, clepsiambos, lyrophœnicion, spadix, phorminges, trigona, chelys, cithara, lyra, "et alia fortasse quamplurima, quorum investigationem aliis relinquamus." A representation is given in the Supplement of the dicord, and also of a cithara, taken from an old Roman sculpture, which seems to have eight strings, though there are but five screws. It is like the old viol in shape, and has no appearance of frets, bridge, or finger-board, but is not adapted to the use of the bow. Anacreon mentions playing on a magadis with twenty strings (this puts an end to the flute question), and in another ode names the pectis, which has been translated cithara. Aristotle also calls these the same instruments. Montfaucon gives a representation of a procession of Isis, taken from an old sculpture, where one of the figures—probably a priestess—is playing on a large triangular
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