Life of Pythagoras — Iamblichus, trans. Thomas Taylor (1818)
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1“ Well-instituted polities,” (says Proclus in MS. Comment. in Alcibiad. prior.) “‘ are averse to the art of playing on wind-instruments ; and therefore neither does Plato admit it. The cause of this is the variety of this instrument, the pipe, which shows that the art which uses it should be avoided. For instruments called Panarmonia, and those consisting of many strings, are imitations of pipes. For every hole of the pipe emits, as they say, three sounds at least; but if the cavity above the holes be opened, then each hole will emit more than three sounds.”
61 changed the intention of the youth, by singing to his lyre that verse of Homer,
Nepenthe, without gall, o’er every ill Oblivion spreads; 7 and thus snatched his host Anchitus from death, and the youth from the crime of homicide. It is also related that the youth from that time became the most celebrated of the disciples of Pythagoras. Farther still, the whole Pythagoric school produced by certain appropriate songs, what they called exartysts or adaptation, synarmoge or elegance of manners, and epaphe or contact, usefully conducting the dispositions of the soul to passions contrary to those which it before possessed. For when they went to bed they purified the reasoning power from the perturbations and noises to which it had been exposed during the day, by certain odes and peculiar songs, and by this means procured for themselves tranquil sleep, and few and good dreams. But when they rose from bed, they again liberated themselves from the torpor and heaviness of sleep, by songs of another kind. Sometimes, also, by musical sounds alone, unaccompanied with words, they healed the passions of the soul and certain diseases, enchanting, as they say, in reality. And it is probable that from hence this name epode, i.e. enchantment, came to be generally used. After this manner, therefore, Pythagoras through music produced the most beneficial correction of human manners and lives.
CHAP. XXVI.
‘Since, however, we are narrating the wisdom employed by Pythagoras in instructing his disciples, it will not be unappropriate to relate that which is proximate
1 Odyss. lib. 4.
p. 62
in a following order to this, viz. how he invented the harmonic science, and harmonic ratios. But for this purpose we must begin a little higher.
Intently considering once, and reasoning with himself, whether it would be possible to devise a certain instrumental assistance to the hearing, which should be firm and unerring, such as the sight obtains through the compass and the rule, or, by Jupiter, through a dioptric instrument; or such as the touch obtains through the balance, or the contrivance of measures;—thus considering, as he was walking near a brazier’s shop, he heard from a certain divine casualty the hammers beating out a piece of iron on an anvil, and producing sounds that accorded with each other, one combination only excepted.
But he recognized in those sounds, the diapason, the diapente, and the diatessaron, harmony. He saw, however, tnat the sound which was between the diatessaron and the diapente was itself by itself dissonant, yet, nevertheless, gave completion to that which was the greater sound among them. Bein
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