But I wish you to know, my most excellent Ulpian, that a more musical and accomplished people than the Alexandrians is not mentioned. And I do not speak only of playing on the harp, with which even the poorest people among us, and those who do not make a profession of it, and who are utterly ignorant of every other kind of learning, are so familiarized that they can in a moment detect any error which has been made in striking the strings,—but especially are they skilful with the flute; and not only in those which are called girls' flutes and boys' flutes, but also in men's flutes, which are called perfect and superperfect; and also in those which are called harp-flutes and finger-flutes. For the flutes called elymi, which Sophocles mentions in his Niobe and in his Drummers, we do not understand to be anything but the common Phrygian flute. And these, too, the Alexandrians are very skilful in. They are acquainted also with the flute with two holes, and also with the intermediate flute, and with those which are called hypotreti, or bored underneath. And Callias also speaks of the flute called elymi, in his Pedetæ. But Juba says that they are an invention of the Phrygians, and that they were also called scytaliæ, from their resemblance in thickness to the scytale. And Cratinus the younger says that the Cyprians also use them, in his Thera- menes. We know, too, of some which are called half-bored, of which Anacreon says—
What lust has now seized thus upon your mind,And these flutes are smaller than the perfect flutes. At all events, Aeschylus says, speaking metaphorically, in his Ixion—
To wish to dance to tender half-bored flutes?
But very soon the greater swallows upAnd these half-bored flutes are the same as those which are called boys' flutes, which they use at banquets, not being fit [p. 283] for the games and public shows; on which account Anacreon called them tender.
The lesser and the half-bored flute.
