caramuchios in their rooms as a Cardax, an
Agrias, or a Callias, or fellows like Thrasonides and Thrasyleon, to
make people disorder the house with hollowing and clapping. Had the
great Ptolemy, who was the first that formed a consort of musicians, but
met with these excellent and royal admonitions, would he not, think you,
have thus addressed himself to the Samians:--

O Muse, whence art thou thus maligned?

For certainly it can never belong to any Athenian to be in such enmity
and hostility with the Muses. But

No animal accurst by Jove
Music's sweet charms can ever love.
(Pindar, "Pythian," i. 25.)

What sayest thou now, Epicurus? Wilt thou get thee up betimes in the
morning, and go to the theatre to hear the harpers and flutists
play? But if a Theophrastus discourse at the table of Concords, or an
Aristoxenus of Varieties, or if an Aristophanes play the critic upon
Homer, wilt thou presently, for very dislike and abhorrence, clap both
thy hands upon thy ears? And do they not hereby make the Scythian king
Ateas more musical than this comes to, who, when he heard that admirable
flutist Ismenias, detained then by him as a prisoner of war, playing
upon the flute at a compotation, swore he had rather hear his own horse
neigh? And do they not also profess themselves to stand at an implacable
and irreconcilable defiance with whatever is generous and becoming? And
indeed what do they ever embrace or affect that is either genteel or
regardable, when it hath nothing of pleasure to accompany it? And would
it not far less affect a pleasurable way of living, to abhor perfumes
and odors, like beetles and vultures, than to shun and abhor the
conversation of learned, critics and musicians? For what flute or harp
ready tuned for a lesson, or

What sweetest concerts e'er with artful noise,
Warbled by softest tongue and best tuned voice,

ever gave Epicurus and Metrodorus such content as the disputes and
precepts about concerts gave Aristotle, Theophrastus, Hieronymus, and
Dicaerchus? And also the problems about flutes, rhythms, and harmonies;
as, for instance, why the longer of two flutes of the same longitude
should speak flatter?--why, if you raise the pipe, will all its notes
be sharp; and flat again, if you depress it?--and why, when clapped
to another, will it sound flatter; and sharper again, when taken from
it?--why also, if you scatter chaff or dust about the orchestra of a
theatre, will