"Ever since his own age a great controversy has raged about the teachings of Aristoxenus. Instead of using ratios, he divided the tetrachord into 30 parts, of which, in his diatonic syntonon, each tone has 12 parts, each semitone 6. . . ." [J. Murray Barbour, Tuning and Temperament, a Historical Survey, Da Capo Press, New York, 1972, p22.]

Perfect Immutable System

Aristoxenus, The Harmonics of Aristoxenus, translated by Henry S. Macran, M.A., Oxford At The Clarendon Press, Henry Frowde, M.A., Publisher to the University of Oxford, New York, 1902, p249

Ancient Greek Music

Iliad (a page from SORGLL Society for the Oral Reading of Greek and Latin Literature)

Schlesinger

HERACLEITUS

Friends of Classics

John Curtis Franklin - Ancient Greek Music Homepage

Ancient Greek Music at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Stefan Hagel)

Music Library of Greece (Lilian Voudouri)

In lieu of a dirth of metrical analysis, syllable by syllable, of ancient Greek poetry, I offer my initial steps towards analyzing the Iliad.

Iliad Stanza 1

. . . The . . . Fourth . . . its apparent value . . . consists of two and a half tones. [Aristoxenus, The Harmonics of Aristoxenus, translated by Henry S. Macran, M.A., Oxford At The Clarendon Press, Henry Frowde, M.A., Publisher to the University of Oxford, New York, 1902, p182]

. . . there is a problem about what exactly is meant by a 'tone'. The Greek writers define it as the interval by which a fifth is greater than a fourth. Strictly speaking, that is the interval given by the ratio 9 : 8, or 204 cents. But Aristoxenus regards it as being at the same time a unit of which a fourth (properly 498 cents) contains exactly two and a half. In effect he is operating with a tempered tone of 200 cents and a tempered fourth of 500 cents. . . . [West, M.L., Ancient Greek Music, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994, p167]