Book 14
38
However, Diogenes the tragic poet represents the pectis as differing from the magadis; for in the Semele he says— And now I hear the turban-wearing women, Votaries of th' Asiatic Cybele, The wealthy Phrygians' daughters, loudly sounding With drums, and rhombs, and brazen-clashing cymbals, Their hands in concert striking on each other, Pour forth a wise and healing hymn to the gods. Likewise the Lydian and the Bactrian maids Who dwell beside the Halys, loudly worship The Tmolian goddess Artemis, who loves The laurel shade of the thick leafy grove, Striking the clear three-corner'd pectis, and Raising responsive airs upon the magadis, While flutes in Persian manner neatly join'd Accompany the chorus. And Phillis the Delian, in the second book of his treatise on Music, also asserts that the pectis is different from the magadis. And his words are these—There are the phœnices, the pectides, the magadides, the sambucæ, the iambicæ, the triangles, the clepsiambi, the scindapsi, the nine-string. For, he says that the lyre to which they sang iambics, they called the iambyca, and the instrument to which they sang them in such a manner as to vary the metre a little, they called the clepsiambus,From κλέπτω, to steal,—to injure privily. while the magadis was an instrument uttering a diapason sound, and equally in tune for every portion of the singers. And besides these there were instruments of other kinds also; for there was the barbitos, or barmus, and many others, some with strings, and some with sounding-boards.
