James Adam, The Republic of Plato

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ἁρμονίαι (according to the orthodox view) are ‘musical modes’ and not simply ‘keys.’ They differed from each other both in the arrangement of the intervals (like our major and minor modes) and also in pitch. It must have been the former difference which chiefly —though not perhaps exclusively—accounted for the different effects of different modes upon the character and emotions, just as we are ourselves affected in different ways by music written in major and in minor keys. See H. S. Jones in Cl. Rev. VIII p. 449.

μιξολυδιστὶ κτλ. The omission of the article has been questioned, but in merely naming the scales it can be dispensed with: cf. (with Stallbaum) Arist. Pol. Θ 5. 1340^{b} 1 (τὴν μιξολυδιστὶ καλουμένην). On the ἁρμονίαι recognized by Plato see App. II.

Ἰαστὶ -- καλοῦνται: ‘there are also varieties of Lydian and Ionian which are called ‘slack’.’ Jowett and Campbell, reading αἵτινες (see cr. n.), remark that the “indefinite relative suits with Plato's affected ignorance”; but the speaker is Glauco, not Socrates, and Glauco is μουσικός. See note on 399 C. Richards condemns αἵτινες χαλαραὶ καλοῦνται as spurious because αἵτινες “cannot be used in this way in good Attic prose of Plato's date.” With the older and better attested reading αὖ τινες, which I have ventured to restore, everything is plain. The words αὖ τινες establish once for all what Westphal (l.c. p. 198) and von Jan (l.c. p. 816) detected even when αἵτινες was read, viz. that Plato is referring not to Ionian and Lydian, but to slack Ionian and slack Lydian, a point which escaped Monro (l.c. p. 7) but not his reviewer (Cl. Rev. VIII p. 449). See also my article in Cl. Rev. X pp. 378 f. We learn from Aristotle that certain musical critics censured Plato for rejecting τὰς ἀνειμένας ἁρμονίας and for characterising them as μεθυστικαί, βακχευτικὸν γὰρ ἥ γε μέθη ποιεῖ μᾶλλον (Pol. Θ 7. 1342^{b} 23—27). It was partly perhaps in deference to these criticisms that Plato altered his view of μέθη in Laws 666 Aff.: see also Grote Plato III p. 328 note