A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

or THALE'TAS (Θαλῆς, Θαλήτας), the celebrated musician and lyric poet. The two forms of the name are mere varieties of the same word: but Θαλῆς seems to be the more genuine ancient form; for it not only has the authority of Aristotle, Strabo, and Plutarch, but it is also used by Pausanias (1.14.4) in quoting the verses composed in honour of the musician by his contemporary Polymnestns. Nevertheless, it is more convenient to follow the prevailing custom among modern writers, and call him Thaletas.

The position of Thaletas is one of the most interesting, and at the same time most difficult points, in that most interesting and difficult subject, the early history of Greek music and lyric poetry. The most certain fact known of him is, fortunately, that which is also the most important; namely, that he introduced from Crete into Sparta certain principles or elements of music and rhythm, which did not exist in Terpander's system, and thereby founded the second of the musical schools which flourished at Sparta. (Plut. de Mus. 9, p. 1135b. )

He was a native of Crete, and, according to the best writers, of the city of Gortyna. (Polymnestus, apud Paus. l.c. ; Plut. de Mus. l.c.) Suidas has preserved other traditions, which assigned him to Cnossus or to Elyrus. (Suid. s.v. for the articles Θαλήτας Κρής and Θαλήτας Κνώσσιος refer without doubt to the same individual, and in the former article the words ἢ Ἰλλυρίος ought to be Ἐλύριος : comp. Meursius, Cret. 1.9; Küster, ad loc. ; Müller, Hist. Lit. of Greece, vol. i. p. 159.)

In compliance, according to tradition, with an invitation which the Spartans sent to him in obedience to an oracle, he removed to Sparta, where, by the sacred character of his paeans, and the humanizing influence of his music, he appeased the wrath of Apollo, who had visited the city with a

plague, and composed the factions of the citizens, who were at enmity with each other. (Paus. l.c. ; Plut. Lycurg. 4 ; Ephorus, apud Strab. x. pp. 480, 482; Sext. Empir. ad v. Rhet. ii. p. 292, Fabric. ; Ael. VH 12.50.) At Sparta he became the head of a new school (κατάστασις) of music, which appears never afterwards to have been supplanted, and the influence of which was maintained also by Xenodamus of Cythera, Xenocritus of Locris, Polymnestus of Colophon, and Sacadas of Argos. (Plut. de Mus. l.c.) These matters will be examined more fully presently; but the brief outline just given is necessary for the understanding of the chronological investigation which follows.

In studying the early history of Greek lyric poetry, nothing would be more desirable, if it were possible, than to fix the precise dates of the musicians and poets who contributed to its development ; that so we might trace the steps of its progress, in relation to the time they occupied, the social state of the people amongst whom they were made, and the order in which they followed from one another. It must, however, be confessed that, after all the labour which scholars have bestowed on the subject, there is an uncertainty, generally to the extent of half a century, and in some cases more, respecting the dates of the earliest poets, while the more important point of their relative order of succession and their distance from each other in time is beset with great difficulties. These remarks apply most strongly to Thaletas, the various dates assigned to whom, by ancient and modern writers, range over a period from before the time of Homer down to the year B. C. 620.

How uncertain, and even fabulous, were the traditions followed by the generality of the ancient writers respecting the date of Thaletas, is manifest from the statements of Suidas, that he lived before the time of Homer, of Demetrius Magnes (apud D. L. 1.38), that he was " very ancient, about the time of Hesiod and Homer and Lycurgus," and of the many other writers, who make him contemporary with Lycurgus, and even an elder contemporary. In nearly all the accounts, above referred to, of the removal of Thaletas to Sparta, he is said to have gone thither at the invitation of Lycurgus, who used his influence to prepare the minds of the people for his own laws ; while some even speak of him as if he were a legislator, from whom Lycurgus derived some of his laws. (Sext. Empir. l.c. ; Arist. Pol. 2.9.5, 2.12.) These accounts, which Aristotle (l.c.) condemns as anachronisms, can easily be explained. The influence of music upon character and manners was in the opinion of the ancients so great, that it was quite natural to speak of Terpander and Thaletas as fellow-workers with the great legislator of the Spartans in forming the character of the people; and then such statements were interpreted by later writers in a chronological sense; for similar traditions are recorded of Terpander as well as of Thaletas. [TERPANDER.] Moreover, in the case of Thaletas, the supposed connection with Lycurgus would assume a more probable appearance on account of his coming from Crete, from whence also Lycurgus was supposed to have derived so many of his institutions; and this is, in fact, the specific form which the tradition assumed (Ephor. apud Strab. x. p.482; Plut. Lycurg. 4), namely, that Lycurgus, arriving at Crete in the course of his travels, there met with Thaletas, who was one of the men renowned in the island for wisdom and political abilities (ἕνα τῶν νομιζομένων ἐκεῖ σοφῶν καὶ πολιτικῶν), and who, while professing to be a lyric poet, used his art as a pretext, but in fact devoted himself to political science in the same way as the ablest of legislators (ποιητὴν μὲν δοκοῦντα λυπικῶν μελῶν καὶ πρόσχημα τὴν τέχνην ταύτην πεποιημένον, ἔρλῳ δὲ ἅπερ οἱ κράτιστοι τῶν νομοθετῶν διαπραττόμενον). Add to this the great probability that later writers mistook the sense of the word νόμοι in the ancient accounts of Thaletas; and his association with Lycurgus is explained. It is not worth while to discuss the statement of Jerome (Chron. s. a. 1266, B. C. 750), who says that Thales of Miletus (probably meaning Thales of Crete, for the philosopher's age is well known) lived in the reign of Romulus. Perhaps this may only be another form of the tradition which made him contemporary with Lycurgus.

The strictly historical evidence respecting the date of Thaletas is contained in three testimonies. First, the statement of Glaucus, one of the highest authorities on the subject, that he was later than Archilochus. (Plut. de Mus. 10, p. 1134d. e.) Secondly, the fact recorded by Pausanias (1.14.4), that Polymnestus composed verses in his praise for the Lacedaemonians, whence it is probable that he was an elder contemporary of Polymnestus, and therefore older than Alcman, by whom Polymnestus was mentioned. (Plut. de Mus. 5, p. 1133a.) Thirdly, in his account of the second school or system (κατάστασις) of music at Sparta, Plutarch tells us (de Mus. 9, p. 1134c.) that the first system was established by Terpander; but of the second the following had the best claim to be considered as the leaders (μάλιστα αἰτίαν ἔχουσιν ἡγεμόνες γενέσθαι), Thaletas, Xenodamus, Xenocritus, Polymnestus, and Sacadas; and that to them was ascribed the origin of the Gymnopaedia in Lacedaemon, of the Apodeixeis in Arcadia, and of the Endymatia in Argos. This important testimony is very probably derived from the work of Glaucus. Lastly, Plutarch (de Mus. 10, p. 1134e.) mentions a vague tradition, which is on the face of it improbable, and which is quite unworthy to be placed by the side of the other three, that Thaletas derived the rhythm called Maron and the Cretic rhythm from the music of the Phrygian flute-player Olympus (ἐκ γὰρ τῆς Ὀλύμπου αὐλήσεως Θαλήταν φασὶν ἐξειργάσθαι ταῦτα· the context shows that Plutarch here deserts his guide, Glaucus, and sets up against him the traditions of other writers, we know not whom).

Now, from these testimonies we obtain the results, that Thaletas was younger than Archilochus and Terpander, but older than Polymnestus and Alcman, that he was the first of the poets of the second Spartan school of music, by whose influence the great Dorian festivals which have been mentioned were either established, or, what is the more probable meaning, were systematically arranged in respect of the choruses which were performed at them.

These conditions would all be satisfied by supposing that Thaletas began to flourish early in the seventh century B. C., provided that we accept the argument for an earlier date of Terpander than that usually assigned to him [TERPANDER]. To escape from the difficulty as Clinton does (F. H. vol. i. s. a. 644), by making Terpander later than

Thaletas, is altogether inadmissible; for, if we reject Plutarch's account of the two musical schools at Sparta, the first founded by Terpander, and the second by Thaletas, the whole matter is thrown into hopeless confusion. Such a mistake, made by so eminent a chronologer, through following implicitly Eusebius and the Parian marble, is an excellent example of the danger of trusting to the positive statements of the chronographers in opposition to a connected chain of inference from more detailed testimonies. On the other hand, Müller, while pointing out Clinton's error, appears to us to place Thaletas much too low, in consequence of accepting the tradition recorded by Plutarch respecting Olympus, whom also he places later than Terpander (Hist. Lit. vol. i. pp. 158, 159). The fact is that we have no sufficient data for the time of Olympus; and even if we had, the tradition recorded by Plutarch is much too doubtful to be set up against the evidence derived from the relations of Thaletas to Archilochus and Alcman. When Müller says that Clinton " does not allow sufficient weight to the far more artificial character of the music and rhythms of Thaletas " (i. e. than those of Terpander), he seems to imply that a long time must necessarily have intervened between the two. Not only is there no ground for this idea, but it is opposed to analogy. There is no ground for it; for it is clear from all accounts that the second system of music was not gradually developed out of the first, by successive improvements, but was formed by the addition of new elements derived from other quarters, of which the first and chief were those introduced by Thaletas from Crete. It is also opposed to analogy, which teaches us that the period of most rapid improvement in any art is that in which it is first brought under the dominion of definite laws, by some great genius, whose first efforts are the signal for the appearance of a host of rivals, imitators, and pupils. Moreover, if there be any truth in the tradition, it would seem probable that Terpander and Thaletas were led to Sparta by very similar causes at no very distant period; and it seems most improbable that, after music had attained the degree of developement to which Terpander brought it at Sparta, the important additional elements, which existed in the Cretan system, should not have been introduced for a period of forty years, which is the interval placed by Müller, between Terpander and Thaletas. Müller's mode of computing backwards the date of Thaletas from that of Sacadas (B. C. 590) is altogether arbitrary; but if such a method he allowable at all, surely thirty years is far too short a time to assign as the period during which the second school of Spartan music chiefly flourished. On the whole, decidedly as Clinton is wrong as to Terpander, he is probably near the mark in fixing the period of Thaletas at B. C. 690-660 ; though it might be better to say that he deems to have flourished about B. C. 670 or 660, and how much before or after those dates cannot be determined. It appears not unlikely that he was already distinguished in Crete, while Terpander flourished at Sparta.

The improvement effected in music by Thaletas appears to have consisted in the introduction into Sparta of that species of music and poetry which was associated with the religious rites of his native country; in which the calm and solemn worship of Apollo prevailed side by side with the more animated songs and dances of the Curetes, which resembled the Phrygian worship of the Magna Mater (Müller, p. 160). His chief compositions were paeans and hyporchemes, which belonged respectively to these two kinds of worship. In connection with the paean he introduced the rhythm of the Cretic foot, with its resolutions in the Paeons; and the Pyrrhic dance, with its several variations of rhythm, is also ascribed to him. He seems to have used both the lyre and the flute. (See Müller, pp. 160, 161.)

Plutarch and other writers speak of him as a lyric poct, and Suidas mentions, as his works, μέλη and ποιήματά τινα μυθικά, and it is pretty certain that the musical compositions of his age and school were often combined with suitable original poems, though sometimes, as we are expressly told of many of the nomes of Terpander, they were adapted to the verses of Homer and others of the older poets. Be this as it may, we have now no remains of the poetry of Thaletas. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. i. pp. 295-297; Müller, Hist. of the Lit. of Anc. Greece, vol. i. pp. 159-161; Ulrici, Gesch. d. Hellen. Dichtkunst, vol. ii. pp. 212, foll., a very valuable account of Thaletas; Bernhardy, Geschichte der Griech. Lit. vol. i. pp. 267, 270, vol. ii. pp. 420, 421, 427.)

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