Institutio Oratoria

It is recorded that the greatest generals played on the lyre and the pipe, and that the armies of Sparta were fired to martial ardour by the strains of music. And what else is the function of the horns and trumpets attached to our legions? The louder the concert of their notes, the greater is the glorious supremacy of our arms over all the nations of the earth.

It was not therefore without reason that Plato regarded the knowledge of music as necessary to his ideal statesman or politician, as he calls him; while the leaders even of that school, which in other respects is the strictest and most severe of all schools of philosophy, [*](sc. the Stoics.) held that the wise man might well devote some of his attention to such studies. Lycurgus himself, the founder of the stern laws of Sparta, approved of the training supplied by music.

Indeed nature itself seems to have given music as a boon to men to lighten the strain of labour: even the rower in the galleys is cheered to effort by song. Nor is this function of music confined to cases where the efforts of a number are given union by the sound of some sweet voice that sets the tune, but even solitary workers find solace at their toil in artless song.

So far I have attempted merely to sound the praises of the noblest

the same fact is proved by the case of Eupolis, who makes Prodamus teach both music and literature, and whose Maricas, who was none other than Hyperbolus in disguise, asserts that he knows nothing of music but letters. Aristophanes [*](Knights, 188. ) again in more than one of his plays shows that boys were trained in music from remote antiquity, while in the Hypobolimaeus of Menander an old man, when a father claims his son from him, gives an account of all expenses incurred on behalf of the boy's education and states that he has paid out large sums to musicians and geometricians.

From the importance thus given to music also originated the custom of taking a lyre round the company after dinner, and when on such an occasion Themistocles confessed that he could not play, his education was (to quote the words of Cicero)

regarded as imperfect.

Even at the banquets of our own forefathers it was the custom to introduce the pipe and lyre, and even the hymn of the Salii has its tune. These practices were instituted by King Numa and clearly prove that not even those whom we regard as rude warriors, neglected the study of music, at least in so far as the resources of that age allowed.

Finally there was actually a proverb among the Greeks,

But let us discuss the advantages which our future orator may reasonably expect to derive from the study of Music. Music has two modes of expression in the voice and in the body; [*](Music includes dancing.) for both voice and body require to be controlled by appropriate rules. Aristoxenus divides music, in so far as it concerns the voice, into rhythm and melody, the one consisting in measure, the latter in sound and song. Now I ask you whether it is not absolutely necessary for the orator to be acquainted with all these methods of expression which are concerned firstly with gesture, secondly with the arrangement of words and thirdly with the inflexions of the voice, of which a great variety are required in pleading.