Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

284 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
a hide stretched over the hollow underside. Music was produced
by plucking the strings, usually seven in number, either with
the fingers or with a plectrum. A variant on this instrument was
the barbiton, which had longer strings. The barbiton was associated
with scenes of revelry held in honor of Dionysos. Another
stringed instrument was the harp, whose use seems to have been
confined largely to professional musicians.
The most popular wind instrument was the aulos. This is often
identified with the flute, although the sound it produced was considerably
lower and closer to that of the oboe or bassoon. The aulos,
which was played at the end, unlike its modern counterpart, consisted
of a hollow pipe made of wood, bronze, bone, or reed. It was
pierced with holes for the fingers and fitted with a reed mouthpiece.
Auloi were usually played in pairs. The chorus of Greek drama
sang and danced to the accompaniment of an aulos player, who
also piped soldiers into battle and played an accompaniment to
exercises in the palaistra. Another wind instrument was the syrinx,
which consisted of a number of pipes of graduated length bound
together. Variations in pitch were made by blocking the inside of
the pipes with wax at different intervals. The syrinx was a somewhat
crude instrument whose invention was attributed to the goat
god Pan. No doubt it was especially popular among shepherds, for
whom it would be the only source of distraction while minding
their flocks.
The nearest approximation to a brass instrument was the salpinx,
a long slender instrument terminating in a bell-shaped aperture.
It was used primarily to herald the beginning and end of religious
and other ceremonies. Several percussion instruments are known,
including the kymbala, from which the word cymbals is derived; the
tympanon, meaning a small drum; the krotala or castanets; and the
sistra or rattles. They were all commonly used in ecstatic cults, notably
those that had been imported into Greece from the East.
THE VISUAL ARTS
In modern culture, art carries a price tag and is often purchased
either as an investment or as a status symbol. Most works of art are
intended for private purchase. Art appreciation is a branch of connoisseurship
that requires a highly trained, professional eye, not
least in order to distinguish between an authentic work of art and
a fake. By and large, the public plays a minor role in the changing
fortunes of an artist’s reputation, which is mainly determined by