According to the theory which appears now to prevail among students of Greek music, these famous names had a double application. There was a Dorian mode as well as a Dorian key, a Phrygian mode and a Phrygian key, and so on. This is the view set forth by Boeckh in the treatise which may be said to have laid the foundations of our knowledge of Greek music (De Metris Pindari, lib. III. cc. vii-xii). It is expounded, along with much subsidiary speculation, in the successive volumes which we owe to the fertile pen of Westphal; and it has been adopted in the learned and excellent Histoire et Théorie de la Musique de l'Antiquité of M. Gevaert. According to these high authorities the Greeks had a system of key (tonoi), and also a system of modes (harmoniai), the former being based solely upon difference of pitch, the latter upon the 'form' or species (eidos) of the octave scale, that is to say, upon the order of the intervals which compose it.
§ 3. The Authorities.
The sources of our knowledge are the various systematic treatises upon music which have come down to us from Greek antiquity, together with incidental references in other authors, chiefly poets and philosophers. Of the systematic or 'technical' writers the earliest and most important is Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle. His treatise on Harmonics (harmonikê) has reached us in a fragmentary condition, but may be supplemented to some extent from later works of the same school. Among the incidental notices of music the most considerable are the passages in the Republic and the Politics already referred to. To these we have to add a few other references in Plato and Aristotle; a long fragment from the Platonic philosopher Heraclides Ponticus, containing some interesting quotations from earlier poets; a number of detached observations collected in the nineteenth section of the Aristotelian Problems; and one or two notices preserved in lexicographical works, such as the Onomasticon of Pollux.
In these groups of authorities the scholars above mentioned find the double use which they believe to have been made of the names Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and the rest. In Aristoxenus they recognise that these names are applied to a series of keys (tonoi), which differed in pitch only. In Plato and Aristotle they find the same names applied to scales called harmoniai, and these scales, they maintain, differed primarily in the order of their intervals. I shall endeavour to show that there was no such double use: that in the earlier periods of Greek music the scales in use, whether called tonoi or harmoniai, differed primarily in pitch: that the statements of ancient authors about them, down to and including Aristoxenus, agree as closely as there is reason to expect: and that the passages on which the opposite view is based—all of them drawn from comparatively late writers—either do not relate to these ancient scales at all, or point to the emergence in post-classical times of some new forms or tendencies of musical art. I propose in any case to adhere as closely as possible to a chronological treatment of the evidence which is at our command, and I hope to make it probable that the difficulties of the question may be best dealt with on this method.
§ 4. The Early Poets.
The earliest of the passages now in question comes from the poet Pratinas, a contemporary of Aeschylus. It is quoted by Heraclides Ponticus, in the course of a long fragment preserved by Athenaeus (xiv. cc. 19–21, p. 624 c−626 a). The words are:
mête syntonon diôke mête tan aneimenan Iasti mousan, alla tan messan neôn arouran aiolize tô melei.
'Follow neither a highly-strung music nor the low-pitched Ionian, but turning over the middle plough-land be an Aeolian in your melody.' Westphal takes the word 'Iasti with syntonon as well as with aneimenan, and infers that there were two kinds of Ionian, a 'highly-strung' and a 'relaxed' or low-pitched. But this is not required by the words, and seems less natural than the interpretation which I have given. All that the passage proves is that in the time of Pratinas a composer had the choice of at least three scales: one (or more) of which the pitch was high (syntonos); another of low pitch (aneimenê), which was called Ionian; and a third, intermediate between the others, and known as Aeolian. Later in the same passage we are told that Pratinas spoke of the 'Aeolian harmony' (prepei toi pasin aoidolabraktais Aiolis harmonia). And the term is also found, with the epithet 'deep-sounding,' in a passage quoted from the hymn to Demeter of a contemporary poet, Lasus of Hermione (Athen. xiv. 624 e):
Damatra melpô Koran te Klymenoio alochon Meliboian, hymnôn anagôn Aiolid' hama barybromon harmonian.
With regard to the Phrygian and Lydian scales Heraclides (l. c.) quotes an interesting passage from Telestes of Selinus, in which their introduction is ascribed to the colony that was said to have followed Pelops from Asia Minor to the Peloponnesus:
prôtoi para kratêras Hellênôn en aulois synopadoi Pelopos matros oreias phrygion aeison nomon; toi d' oxyphônois pêktidôn psalmois krekon Dydion hymnon.
'The comrades of Pelops were the first who beside the Grecian cups sang with the flute (aulos) the Phrygian measure of the Great Mother; and these again by shrill-voiced notes of the pectis sounded a Lydian hymn.' The epithet oxyphônos is worth notice in connexion with other evidence of the high pitch of the music known as Lydian. The Lydian mode is mentioned by Pindar, Nem. 4. 45:
exyphaine glykeia kai tod' autika phorminx Lydia syn harmonia melos pephilêmenon.
The Dorian is the subject of an elaborate jest made at the expense of Cleon in the Knights of Aristophanes, ll. 985–996:
alla kai tod' egô ge thaumazô tês hyomousias autou phasi gar auton hoi paides hoi xynephoitôn tên Dôristi monên enarmottesthai thama tên lyran, allên d' ouk ethelein labein; kata ton kitharistên orgisthent' apagein keleuein, hôs harmonian ho pais outos ou dynatai mathein ên mê Dôrodokêsti.
§ 5. Plato.
Following the order of time, we come next to the passage in the Republic (p. 398), where Socrates is endeavouring to determine the kinds of music to be admitted for the use of his future 'guardians,' in accordance with the general principles which are to govern their education. First among these principles is the condemnation of all undue expression of grief. 'What modes of music (harmoniai),' he asks, are plaintive (thrênôdeis)?' 'The Mixo-lydian,' Glaucon replies, 'and the Syntono-lydian, and such-like.' These accordingly Socrates excludes. 'But again, drunkenness and slothfulness are no less forbidden to the guardians; which of the modes are soft and convivial (malakai te kai sympotikai)?' 'Ionian,' says Glaucon, 'and Lydian, those which are called slack (chalarai).' 'Which then remain?' 'Seemingly Dorian and Phrygian.' 'I do not know the modes,' says Socrates, 'but leave me one that will imitate the tones and accents of a brave man enduring danger or distress, fighting with constancy against fortune: and also one fitted for the work of peace, for prayer heard by the gods, for the successful persuasion or exhortation of men, and generally for the sober enjoyment of ease and prosperity.' Two such modes,