Perhaps the best known Roman musician was not a musician at all, but a philosopher- theorist named Boethius. Boethius and his contemporaries did not consider that any of the studies they did (mathematical and logical works) to be original in nature, but merely an explanation of basic principles of fact.

Boethius

Boethius’ work in philosophy was augmented by his wide-ranging interests in other intellectual areas, including music, theology, logic, and arithmetic. Those interests were indulged both in original works and in adaptations and translations of earlier treatises of Greek and Latin antiquity. Much of the work he produced in this vein became central to the curriculum of the Latin Middle Ages. This is true for the De Arithemtica, shown here, which Boethius adapted in around 520 from Nicomachus’ Introductio Arithmetica, and also for his De Musica, which held much the same place in the medieval curriculum, both in the monastic schools that arose quickly in the west in the Carolingian period, and in the later cathedral schools and

Boethius was the author of The Principles of Music (De Institutione Musica) written in the early 6th century, and it was considered to be the stepping stone to understanding music throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Boethius then went on to write discussions of the

four mathematical disciplines, the Quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy) thus laying a scientific foundation with these works. As the author of The Fundamentals of Music he provided the basics of musical theories and conclusions regarding the study of music. This work is highly recognized and still used today because it provides a comprehensive discussion of what music is and defines through reason its place in the universe. Boethius decided that music had to be broken into three musical types:

Music of the universe (musica mundana), Music of human beings (musica humana)Instrumental music (musica instrumentalis)The study of music would include observing these three elements as well as the theoretical

ideas studied in the Quadrivium which related music to numbers, and promoted an understanding of consonance and dissonance in music.

Moreover, Roman music was subject to foreign influences: at an early date that of the Etruscans, later that of the Greeks, and, during the late republican and the imperial periods, that of the orient. The Romans assimilated, modified and extended the music of the nations they conquered. From the 2nd century bce, after the subjugation of the Hellenistic kingdoms in Macedonia, Syria and Egypt, various musical genres developed under sustained Hellenistic and oriental influences.

The greatest efflorescence of Greco-Roman music occurred during the Augustan principate (27 bce to 14 ce) and under the imperial dynasties of the Julio-Claudians (14–68 ce), the Flavians (69–96 ce) and the Antonines (96–192 ce). Professional virtuosos, mainly of Greek origin, sang and played at festivals; outstanding Egyptian and Syrian pantomimi performed in public; Greek and Roman musicians and actors constituted professional guilds at Rome and in all the larger cities; dancers and musicians were imported as slaves from all parts of the Empire; musical instruments and musical scholarship were developed; and the participation of music lovers in public events increased.

At the same time writers, philosophers and historians, including Seneca, Plutarch, Juvenal and Tacitus, attacked the demoralizing and effeminate effects of theatrical music, and the ‘decline’ of music in the service of luxury, on national, social, musical and moral grounds. Many actors, dancers and musicians continued, nevertheless, to enjoy public favour, despite their low legal and social position. Even after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 ce they became the means by which the instruments and musical practice of antiquity were transmitted to the itinerant musicians (joculatores) of the Middle Ages.

2. Music in religion and ritual.(i) The Roman religion.The Romans imputed an extraordinary importance to the magical functions of music in

ritual. The companies (sodalitates) of priests known as the Salii were founded as early as the legendary era of the Kings and survived into imperial times, when the group consisted of 12 members of the nobility; under a leading singer (vates) and a leading dancer (praesul) they performed archaic armed dances and responsorial carmina (songs), in honour of Mars and Quirinus, according to a strict ritual (Livy, i.20.4). Another ancient priestly company, the Arval Brethren (fratres Arvales), even as late as the early 3rd century ce, still performed their traditional ritual song, the carmen Arvale, intended to banish malevolent influences during a procession around the sacred grove.

Tibia players (tibicines), probably originally from Etruria, constituted one of the oldest professional organizations at Rome (Plutarch, Numa, xvii) and their participation in the ritual also had a magical function; their playing was intended to render inaudible any maleficent noises during the rigidly prescribed Roman sacrificial rites (Pliny, Naturalis historia, xxviii.2.11), to banish evil spirits and to summon up benevolent deities. For similar reasons during the Empire, tibia players invariably accompanied funeral processions and ceremonies and sacrifices, whether made by peasants or on the highest state occasions; they were frequently represented in reliefs on altars, triumphal arches, sarcophagi (For illustration see TIBIA) and on coins (Vorreiter, 1977). The tibicines were sometimes supported by lyre players (fidicines); however, the tibia (originally a bone pipe with three or four finger-holes, and later, like the Greek aulos, a double-pipe reed instrument with two pipes made from ivory, silver or boxwood) remained the national ritual instrument of the Romans (Wille).

The tibicines owed their esteemed position to the part they played in the sacred rite (Ovid, Fasti, vi.657–61); they enjoyed state privileges, and commemorated their legendary strike of 311 bce (Livy, ix.30.5ff) every year in Rome with a guild festival, processions and a public feast in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. During the later days of the republic and in the early Empire the members of the municipal Roman collegium tibicinum were freedmen (liberti), whereas the trumpeters of the state religion (tubicines sacrorum populi Romani) held the rank of priest. From the 2nd century bce choirs of boys and girls sang, after the Greek fashion, in processions of atonement or supplication; during the secular games of Augustus in 17 bce these choirs sang alternate strophes of the Carmen saeculare composed by Horace. Similar choirs sang hymns of mourning at the funeral of Emperor Pertinax in 193 ce.

(ii) Music in the cults of Cybele, Dionysus and Isis.The musical culture of the Romans was influenced by the mystery religions of CYBELE

(the magna mater), DIONYSUS (Bacchus) and ISIS, which originated in Phrygia, Greece and Egypt respectively.

The cult of Cybele was officially introduced at Rome as early as 204 bce; festivals, lasting for several days and accompanied by scenic games (ludi Megalenses), were held annually to commemorate the dedication of her temple on the Aventine. The priests carried the cult-idol of the goddess in triumphal procession to the music of bronze cymbala, frame drums or tympana, cornua and ‘Phrygian auloi’ or ‘Berecyntiae tibiae’ (i.e. tibiae pertaining to Cybele) whose deeper-sounding left pipe had an upturned bell (fig. 1 [not available online]; see also AULOS, fig.; and TYMPANUM (I)). These instruments were also played during the orgiastic dances of the priests in the temples (Catullus, lxiii.19ff).

Livy gave an account (xxxix.8.8) of the ecstatic nature of the music in the cult of Dionysus: the loud beating (by hand) of the tympana and cymbala drowned the cries of those being violated. Despite the proscription of Dionysiac festivals by Senate decree in 186 bce, they were repeatedly held during the last century of the republic and during the early Empire. Pompeiian wall paintings and a few sarcophagal reliefs of the 2nd and 3rd centuries clearly show the orgiastic and cathartic nature of this music in many depictions of different kinds of wind and percussion instruments (tibiae, transverse flutes, cymbala, tympana, foot-clappers, small bells etc.; see Fleischhauer, 1964, 2/1978, figs.39–45).

After the conquest of Egypt in 30 bce, the cult of Isis also spread through the Roman Empire; this process continued during the reigns of the Flavians, the Antonines and the Severans, in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries ce. The characteristic and traditional instrument of the Isis cult was

the sistrum, a bright-sounding metal rattle, which was used to banish the influence of malevolent spirits (see ISIS, [not available online]); Old Egyptian vertical long flutes and angular harps were also played during processions, sacrificial ceremonies and mystery rites of the cult. As in the cults of Cybele and Dionysus, instrumentalists and hymn singers were attached to the temples.

3. Secular music.(i) Military music.

Trumpeter playing a straight tuba in the triumphal procession of…There was an ancient tradition of military music in Rome. Trumpeters (tubicines) and horn players (cornicines) are mentioned as early as the constitutional reforms (attributed to Servius Tullius) of the 6th century bce. The Romans inherited their instruments from the Etruscans: the straight tuba, a bronze or iron tube with a small bell (fig.1); the long-stemmed lituus with a hook-shaped bell that was bent back (see TIBIA, [not available online]); and the cornu, which was circular with a crossbar attached diagonally (see CORNU, illustration). There are originals and modern reproductions of these instruments in museums in Rome, Naples, Mainz and elsewhere (see Behn, 1912).

The duties of the Roman military musicians were described in the late 4th century ce by Vegetius (Epitome rei militaris, ii.22), whose account is corroborated and supplemented by literary and iconographic evidence of earlier centuries, such as the reliefs on Trajan's Column at Rome (see TUBA (II), illustration). The trumpeters gave fixed signals to sound the alarm, break camp, attack or retreat. They signalled changes of the watch and also played on the march, at funerals and in triumphal and sacrificial processions. The lituus players generally belonged to the cavalry and auxiliary cohorts, whereas horn players gave special signals to standard-bearers during the legion's tactical manoeuvres and are therefore frequently represented standing near them (see Fleischhauer, 1964, 2/1978, fig.31).

In battle the sharp ringing sounds of the trumpets would have mingled with the dark, coarse noise of the horns, the combined sound (concentus) of the instruments being designed to encourage the Roman ranks and to confuse the enemy (Livy, xxx.33.12; Tacitus, Annales, i.68.3). In the army hierarchy, the military musicians ranked among the ‘non-commissioned officers’ (principales); under Septimius Severus (193–211 ce), in order to improve their position, they formed themselves into bodies with common funds. This is attested by inscribed statutes (leges) and by membership lists of trumpeters and horn players of the 3rd Augustan Legion in Lambaesis (Numidia) (G. Wilmanns, ed.: Inscriptiones Africae latinae, Berlin, 1881, no.2557, p.295).

(ii) Folksongs and work songs.Literary references from several centuries show that the Romans had many folksongs and

work songs in everyday use (Varro, Saturae Menippeae, 363): singing and instrumental music provided a rhythmical accompaniment for rowing, reaping, treading grapes, weaving and so on. Traditional folksongs of the following types are attested: table songs, songs of mourning (e.g. the nenia), lullabies, nursery rhymes, soldiers' victory songs, birthday and wedding songs (e.g. the fescennini), songs of love, joy, invective and satire (Wille, 1967; 1997). Satirical songs were popular in pre-literary times, as is shown by their prohibition in the Twelve Tables (the earliest Roman code of laws, drawn up in 451–450 bce); and they repeatedly served as mass political songs in the last days of the republic (e.g. Cicero, Pro Sestio, lv.118).

(iii) Entertainment and theatre.After the Roman expansion during the Punic Wars (3rd and 2nd centuries bce) and the

annexation of kingdoms in the eastern Mediterranean (Macedonia, Syria and Egypt), the Hellenistic

and oriental features in Roman musical culture became more firmly established and widespread, and the following centuries saw the development of various genres of theatrical, dance and entertainment music. In Rome, as early as 364 bce, Etruscan histriones or ludiones (actor-dancers) had performed pantomimic dances to the accompaniment of tibiae at a sacred festival; the young people of Rome were stimulated to emulate this (Livy, vii.2.4ff).

However, from the middle of the 3rd century bce, Roman theatrical music was decisively and increasingly influenced by the Greek theatre. Latin adaptations of Greek dramas were produced in Rome for the first time in 240 bce, by Livius Andronicus, a Greek from Tarentum. Then Plautus (c254–184 bce) incorporated features of Hellenistic song and Euripidean monody, together with the literary style of Greek comedies, in his Roman comedies, which included sung portions (cantica), monodies and duets. Tibicines performed a prelude at the beginning, accompanied the cantica and various (spoken) verse passages of the actors and singers, and provided music between the acts as well as an accompaniment for dance interludes. Tibicines from the slave classes were commissioned to compose the accompanying music for Plautus's Stichus and for the six surviving comedies of Terence (c190–159 bce).

After the conquest of Macedonia in 167 bce and the destruction of Corinth in 146 bce, Greek actors and musicians came to Italy in vast numbers; initially they appeared in the triumphal games of Roman generals such as L. Anicius Gallus (167 bce) and L. Mummius (146 bce). Their organized guilds of ‘Dionysiac artists’ (Dionysiaci artifices, or in Greek Sunodoi tōn peri Dionuson technitōn) included all the types of artist necessary for staging public festivals: tragic and comic poets and actors, musicians, players of the kithara and tibia, trumpeters and stage personnel. The existence of these TECHNITAI meant that Roman organizers of games (Sulla, Antonius etc., and later the emperors) could easily present musical and theatrical festivals; the latter increased in numbers and became more widely diffused in the early days of the Empire and caused the founding of local theatrical organizations. The majority of the Dionysiac artists, predominantly Greeks, formed a ‘union with all the members of the world’ (sunodos tōn apo tes oikoumenēs peri ton Dionuson … technitōn), centred on Rome at least from the time of Claudius (41–54 ce); they cultivated and disseminated theatrical and musical works in festivals, and also in the imperial cult, in all the larger cities of the Empire. Augustus, Claudius, Hadrian, Septimius Severus, Caracalla and Diocletian (d 316 ce) granted and confirmed their old privileges of immunity, freedom from taxation etc.

Following the example of the Greek musicians, Roman actors joined together as parasiti Apollinis, probably as early as the middle of the 2nd century bce, to improve their position in society. The growing number of theatrical and musical performances during state-sponsored games (such as the ludi Romani or ludi Apollinares) also helped to unite these artists. Despite their legally dishonourable status (infamia), some outstanding actors, such as Q. Roscius, and some foreign pantomimi enjoyed the favour of all classes in the early Empire, and cities and communities issued decrees and erected statues in their honour (H. Dessau, ed.: Inscriptiones Latii veteris latinae, Berlin, 1887, no.2113, p.199; no.2977, p.319).

(iv) Hellenistic song.During the later days of the republic, Hellenistic art song was introduced to Rome with

immediate success. Women playing string instruments of all kinds, among them harpists (psaltriae sambucistriaeque), and itinerant singers (cantores, both male and female) from Greece and Asia Minor performed lyric poems to instrumental accompaniment.

Vocal settings were made first of the elegies of Valerius Aedituus, Porcius Licinus and Q. Lutatius Catulus (late 2nd and early 1st century bce), and soon after of other genres of poetry. Virgil's Eclogues came to be interpreted by singers in the theatre; the hendecasyllables of Pliny the Younger (62–113 ce) were sung to the lyre or kithara (Pliny, Epistulae, vii, letter 4.8–9) and similar performance may be assumed for some of the lyric poems of Catullus (c87–54 bce) and the odes of Horace (65–8 bce).

Actor-singers and itinerant kitharodes appeared increasingly as performers of Greek music at public events, such as the musical competitions (agones) established at Rome by Nero in 60 ce and Domitian in 86 ce. For their performances of Greek hymns, and of dramatic and pathetic solos from tragedies in concert performance, they received enormous fees (Suetonius, Vespasian, 19) and the privileges of honorary citizens. Their audiences praised brilliant performances with enthusiastic applause and criticized mistakes (e.g. rhythmic inaccuracy). Emulating them, many amateurs (among them senators and emperors such as Caligula, Nero, Hadrian, Commodus, Elagabalus and Severus Alexander) cultivated singing and playing solo instruments (kithara, trumpet, tibiae, hydraulis, bagpipes etc.); they took instruction with famous virtuosos (e.g. Terpnus, Diodorus) and even competed, as did Nero, with professional artists in public (Suetonius, Nero, 21ff). Some performers were also celebrated composers, such as the Cretan kitharode Mesomedes, who served at the court of Hadrian.

(v) Mime and pantomime.At the beginning of the Augustan principate the pantomime was established in Rome and

Italy. Foreign solo dancers represented mythological figures or individual characters, or mimed well-known scenes from Greek tragedy. The instrumental accompaniment for these dancers ranged from a single pair of tibiae, preferred by the famous Alexandrian pantomimus Bathyllus, to an ensemble with chorus, which is supposed to have been introduced by Pylades of Cilicia, his rival, in 22 bce (Macrobius, Saturnalia, ii.7.18).

The pantomime was further developed by dancers from Egypt, Syria and other provinces and during the Empire acquired a stylized repertory of gestures and dance figures for the interpretation of mythological and dramatic material. Even in late Roman times pantomimi were accompanied by the tibiae, syrinx, kithara and other instruments; the dancers, singers and instrumentalists were directed rhythmically by tibia players with foot-clappers (scabillarii).

From the late republican period the mime was the most popular form of Roman theatre, not only with slaves and freedmen but also with citizens. Male and female mimi without masks realistically acted scenes from everyday life and also imitated events and characters borrowed in part from Greek comedy. That their acting was sometimes supplemented by interludes of dance and song is confirmed by stage directions of the 2nd century ce which indicate the use of crotala and tympana in the Charition mime (B.P. Grenfell and A.S. Hunt, eds.: The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iii, London, 1903, no.413, pp.41ff).

4. Instruments and theory.The multifarious character of Roman musical life is reflected in the musical instruments, as

pictorial representations, literary references and some surviving instruments show (Wardle, 1982). The cosmopolitan musical culture of Rome, from the last days of the republic to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 ce, was stimulated by foreign influences fostered by trade and traffic, wars, and by the immigration of musicians, virtuosos and slaves who came to Italy and Rome from all the countries of the Empire, importing their own instruments and music. The

Romans adopted Etruscan, Greek and oriental instruments, and perfected and developed them (Scott, 1957). The number of strings on the lyre and kithara was increased, and their bodies were enlarged ; this was important for the art music of the virtuosos. The angular harp with a vertical soundbox, and the long-necked lute, originating in the orient and popular in late Roman times, were further developed for use on public and domestic occasions. Frame drums or tympana, bronze cymbala and other instruments were introduced to Rome with the Hellenistic mystery cults and were used in the popular music of the theatre, the dance and entertainment in general. Small bells, foot-clappers and transverse flutes were used in the cult of Dionysus, and the sistrum and the Old Egyptian long flute were still used in the Isis cult. The combination of crotala and cymbala produced forked cymbals, whereas foot-clappers (scabella) were favoured for marking dance rhythms in the accompaniment of pantomimi. Military instruments of Etruscan origin (the tuba, lituus and cornu) were played by the Romans in processions, at funerals and public games (e.g. gladiatorial combats).

To increase its technical and acoustic possibilities the Phrygian pipes or ‘Berecyntiae tibiae’, used mainly in the cults of Cybele and Dionysus and in the theatre, were given an attachment of movable metal rings (Horace, Ars poetica, 202) by means of which the increased number of finger-holes of both pipes could be opened or closed for transposition when necessary); this meant that the desired scale could be engaged more easily. Originals from Pompeii and Herculaneum and pictorial representations (reliefs, wall-paintings and mosaics) demonstrate the technical refinement of this widely used wind instrument.

The hydraulis, an invention attributed to Ctesibius, an Alexandrian engineer (3rd century bce), later came into favour as an instrument for domestic music at Rome and in the provinces, and because of its loud volume it was also used in. It was supplemented with a register-like series of open and stopped pipes in various scales (as in the organ of Aquincum near Budapest, dating from 228 ce; in the 4th century ce, portable pneumatic (bellows) organs were also in vogue.

Solo instrumental music was practised in public and private by famous virtuosos and by Roman amateurs with the aim of achieving artistic perfection. Groups of instrumentalists formed small ensembles to accompany singers or dancers, or larger ensembles (after the fashion of Alexandria and the orient) to perform in theatres (Seneca, Epistulae morales, lxxxiv.10) and at popular spectacles (Vopiscus Carinus, xix.2).

Some Romans tried to make the heritage of Greek music theory their own, to propagate it in their writings and to make it available for other disciplines (rhetoric, architecture and medicine). Music was accorded its distinguished position in the educational system of the liberal arts as early as the 1st century bce by MARCUS TERENTIUS VARRO (116–27 bce), in more detail by AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (late 4th century ce) and, in allegorical guise, by MARTIANUS CAPELLA (early 5th century ce). The tradition of applying an encyclopedic approach to music was continued in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages by CASSIODORUS (c480–575) and ISIDORE OF SEVILLE (c560–636), whose writings on music transmitted some of the basic definitions, classifications and harmonic knowledge of Greek and Roman antiquity to the Middle Ages.

The poet-philosopher Lucretius (c98–55 bce) devoted himself to the history and psychology of music. Cicero (106–43 bce) recommended that orators should receive musical education, and expounded Stoic and Epicurean musical aesthetics. The architect Vitruvius (c84–14 bce) described the acoustical problems of theatre construction (see ACOUSTICS, §I, 7) and organ building, and Quintilian (c35–96 ce) dealt with voice training and musical delivery by orators.

In some later Latin writers on music, such as Censorinus (3rd century ce) and Macrobius, there is a widening gulf between theory and contemporary practice, for Neoplatonic and neo-Pythagorean influence prompted a tendency towards a speculative and mystical attitude. The De institutione musica by BOETHIUS (c480–524), is the most substantial Latin treatise on music. The work was conceived as part of a series of books on the mathematical arts, and subsequently became the most influential of the ancient music treatises during the Middle Ages.