Now that the right moulding or ruin of ingenuous
manners and civil conduct lies in a well-grounded musical
education, Aristoxenus has made apparent. For, of those
that were contemporary with him, he gives an account of
Telesias the Theban, who in his youth was bred up in the
noblest excellences of music, and moreover studied the
works of the most famous lyrics, Pindar, Dionysius the
Theban, Lamprus, Pratinas, and all the rest who were accounted most eminent; who played also to perfection upon
the flute, and was not a little industrious to furnish himself
with all those other accomplishments of learning; but being past the prime of his age, he was so bewitched with
the theatre's new fangles and the innovations of multiplied
notes, that despising those noble precepts and that solid
practice to which he had been educated, he betook himself to Philoxenus and Timotheus, and among those
delighted chiefly in such as were most depraved with
diversity of notes and baneful innovation. And yet, when
he made it his business to make verses and labor both
ways as well in that of Pindar as that of Philoxenus, he
could have no success in the latter. And the reason
proceeded from the truth and exactness of his first education.
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