Verify Citation - 5. Music, Temperament, and Social Concord
From The Observatory
Query: 5. Music, Temperament, and Social Concord
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
Chapter 16 of Athenaeus’s Banquet of the Sophists dealt largely with the role of music in banquets and related occasions. He reported that:
“while most persons devote this art [of music] to social gatherings for the sake of correcting conduct and of general usefulness, the ancients went further and included in their customs and laws the singing of praises to the gods by all who attended feasts, in order that our dignity and sobriety might be retained through their help. For, since the songs are sung in concert, if discourse on the gods has been added it dignifies the mood of every one.”[1]
Originally this was cited as “XIV.627f.”—can someone confirm the precise citation? It seems likely this was a typo for roman numeral 14 instead of roman numeral 16, and the line breakdown is not easily available online in English translations such as this source or the one we cite in the footnote.
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- ↑ Athenaeus, “From the Sophists at Dinner,” in “The Greek View of Music” in Oliver Strunk (selected and annotated by), Source Readings in Music History: From Classical Antiquity through the Romantic Era (New York: 1950), p. 53.
