CHAP. VI

Summary

On the music and choral dancing of the Dorians.

1. We are now about to speak of the history of music in the different Doric states; and before we notice particular facts and circumstances, we must direct our attention to the more general one, namely, that one of the musical measures, or ἀρμονίαι (by which term the ancient Greeks denoted the arrangement of intervals, the length of which was fixed by the different kinds of harmony, γένη, according to the strings of the tetrachord, together with the higher or lower scale of the whole system), was anciently called the Doric, and that this measure, together with the Phrygian and Lydian, was long the only one in use among the musicians of Greece, and consequently the only one which in these early times derived its name from a Greek nation; a sufficient warrant for us to consider it as the genuine Greek measure, in contradistinction to any other introduced at a later period. A question next arises, wherefore this ancient and genuine Greek strain was called the Doric. The only explanation that can be given is, that it was brought to perfection in Doric countries, viz. in the ancient domiciles of music, Crete, Sparta, Sicyon, and Delphi. There cannot therefore have been any school or succession of musicians among the other Greek nations, of greater celebrity than the Doric, before the time we allude to.