United States or North Macedonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Credulity must be very strong in those who believe it possible for music to drive away the pestilence. Antiquity, however, as mentioned above, relates that Thaletas, a famous lyric poet, contemporary with Solon, was gifted with this power; but it is impossible to render the fact credible, without qualifying it by several circumstances omitted in the relation.
These would be admirable proofs of musical power! We have the testimony of Plutarch, and several other ancient writers, that Thaletas the Cretan, delivered the Lacedemonians from the pestilence by the sweetness of his lyre.
The disease having, probably, reached its highest pitch of malignity when the musician arrived, must afterwards have become less contagious by degrees; till, at length, ceasing of itself, by the air wafting away the seeds of infection, and recovering its former purity, the extirpation of the disease was attributed by the people to the music of Thaletas, who had been thought the sole mediator, to whom they owed their happy deliverance.
Music developed in connection with lyric poetry. The Greeks at first used the four-stringed lyre. Olympus and Thaletas made further improvements. Greek lyric poetry flourished, especially from 670 to 440 B.C. The Aeolian lyrists of Lesbos founded a school of their own. The two great representatives are Alcaus, who sang of war and of love, and Sappho, who sang of love.
Word Of The Day