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If anyone presumed to transgress in any way
the rules of the good old music, they would not permit
this; but even Terpander, one of the oldest and the
best harp-player of his time as well as a devoted
admirer of the deeds of heroes, the Ephors none the
less fined, and carried away his instrument and
nailed it to a wall because he put in just one extra
string for the sake of the variety in the notes; for
they approved only the simpler melodies. Moreover,
when Timotheus was competing at the Carneian
Festival, one of the Ephors took a knife, and asked
him on which side he should cut out the superfluous
strings beyond the usual seven.1
1 For variant versions of the story see the note on Moralia, 220 c, supra.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1931. 3.
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