I am acquainted, too, with other kinds of flutes, the tragic flute, and the lysiodic1 flute, and the harplike flute; all which are mentioned by Ephorus, in his Inventions and by Euphranor the Pythagorean, in his treatise on Flutes, and also by Alexon, who wrote another treatise on Flutes. But the flute made of reeds is called tityrinus among the Dorians in Italy, as Artemidorus the Aristophanian tells us, in the second book of his History of Doris. And the flute which is called magadis, which is also named palæo-magais, sends forth a sharp and a deep note at the same time, as Anaxandrides says in his Armed Fighter—
I will speak like a magadis, both loudly and gentlyAnd the flutes called lotus flutes are the same which are called photinges by the Alexandrians; and they are made of the plant called the lotus; and this is a wood which grows in Libya. But Juba says that the flute which is ma e out of the leg bones of the kid is an invention of the Thebans; and Tryphon says that those flutes also which are called elphantine flutes were first bored among the Phoenicians. I know, too, that the magadis is a stringed instrument, as is the harp, the lyre, and the barbitos. But Euphorion the epic poet says in his book on the Isthmian Games—“Those men who are now called players on the nablas, and on the pandurus, and on the sambuca, do not use any new instrument, for the baromus and the barbitos (both of which are mentioned by Sappho and Anacreon), and the magadis, and the triangle, and the sambuca are all ancient instruments. At all events, a statue of one of the Muses was erected in Mitylee by Lesbothemis, holding a sambuca in her hand.” But Aristoxenus calls the following foreign instruments—phœnices, and pectides, and magadides, and sambucæ, and triagles, and clepsiambi, and scindapsi, and the instrument called the enneachord or nine-stringed instrument. But Plato, in the third book of his Polity, states—“' We shall not, hen,' said I, 'have much need of many strings or of much harmony in our songs and melodies.' 'I think not,' said he. 'But we [p. 284] shall have triangles, and pectides, and all sorts of instruments which have many strings and are very harmonious.'”
