Music in Ancient Greece and Rome

This volume presents an introduction to the study of music from Homeric times to the Roman emperor Trajan. Chapters include: an exploration of the contexts in which music played a role, including genres of poetry regarded as musical by the ancient Greeks; a discussion of instruments, including the aulos, the kithara and the lyre; an analysis of scales, intervals and tuning, incorporating a discussion on the evidence for scales and the concepts of species and key; an examination of the principal types of rhythm used in the musical sections in various literary genres; and an exploration of Greek theories of harmony and acoustics, from the famous Pythagorean discovery and an account of the De Audibilibus, commonly attributed to Aristotle.