[399d]
many
stringed and poly-harmonic1
instruments.” “Apparently not.”
“Well, will you admit to the city flute-makers and flute-players?
Or is not the flute the most 'many-stringed' of instruments and do not the
pan-harmonics2 themselves imitate
it?” “Clearly,” he said. “You have
left,” said I, “the lyre and the cither. These are
useful3 in the
city, and in the fields the shepherds would have a little piccolo to pipe
on.4” “So our argument
indicates,” he said.
1 Metaphorically. The “many-toned instrumentation of the flutes,” as Pindar calls it, Ol. vii. 12, can vie with the most complex and many-stringed lyre of musical innovation.
2 Cf. 404 D, the only other occurrence of the word in Plato.
3 Cf. my note on Timaeus 47 C, in A.J.P. vol. x. p. 61.
4 Ancient critics noted this sentence as an adaptation of sound to sense. Cf. Demetr.Περὶ ἑρμ185. The sigmas and iotas may be fancied to suggest the whistling notes of the syrinx. So Lucretius v. 1385 “tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum.” Cf. on Catullus 61. 13 “voce carmina tinnula.”
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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