(Gk.; Lat. tibia).
A Greek reed instrument. It was the most important of the ancient Greek wind instruments. (The term has often been mistranslated ‘flute’ by modern scholars.)
II. The performers: auletes and auletrides
ANNIE BÉLIS
4. Terminology and classification.
The aulos occupied an important place in Greek civilization. Information about the instrument and its use is to be found in many and varied sources extending over a period of some ten centuries. The sources fall into three main categories: texts and written records, iconographic sources and archaeological sources.
Numerous references to the aulos exist throughout Greek literature, but several works (or parts of works) contain information of a more technical nature: for example, books iv and xiv of Athenaeus’s Sophists at Dinner; Pseudo-Plutarch’s On Music; fragments of treatises with remarks about the instrument’s bore; notes by lexicographers; and scholia to tragic and comic writers and lyric poets. No works specifically devoted to the aulos appear to have survived: only the titles of works and the names of certain authors are known, for example, the treatises On Auloi by Aristoxenus of Tarentum and by the Pythagorean Euphranor. Several inscriptions and various papyri (musicians’ contracts etc.) contain technical terms designating auloi.
Iconographic records, which extend uninterruptedly from the earliest times (the Cycladic and Minoan periods) to the 4th and 5th centuries ce, are numerous and range from Greek ceramics to mosaics, reliefs and wall paintings. After the 1st century bce and most notably during the Roman period, relief techniques and the quality of depictions are such that a ‘realistic’ view of the instruments and especially their mechanisms, which are never shown on Attic ceramics, becomes possible.
Several hundred (maybe as many as a thousand) auloi, many of them fragmentary but some almost complete, have come to light during archaeological investigations. Often capable of being dated accurately, these remains provide direct evidence of what auloi were like in a given place at a given time. Instruments dating from the 6th century bce to late antiquity have been discovered in countries as far afield as Greece, Italy, France, the Low Countries, Egypt, Sudan, Israel, Turkey and Tajikistan. Systematic study of this evidence is yet to be made, although work has begun on the tibiae of the Roman world (see Péché).
The Greek word aulos, even when used in the singular, usually denotes a wind instrument consisting of two pipes and two (probably double) reeds. However, since the word was also applied to any hollow, elongated tube, aulos may refer to any wind instrument consisting of a single pipe with or without a reed, including (occasionally) the trumpet. When qualified by the term polukalamos, the aulos is an instrument with several pipes of unequal length, otherwise called surinx, the ancient equivalent of modern pan-pipes (see Syrinx). The pipes of Greek auloi were always cylindrical. Instruments with a conical bore first appeared among the Etruscans and then in the Roman world. A very slightly flared bell at the end of the pipe occurs in a few specimens from the end of the Hellenistic and imperial periods.
To play the double aulos, instrumentalists placed the two double reeds between their lips. Their embouchure was sometimes sealed by a Phorbeia (mouthband) perforated by two small holes to take the reeds; the pipes could be held either close together or further apart. On many Attic vases the little fingers are placed under the pipes, probably to give a better grip when the instrument was made of a heavy material such as ivory or metal.
The Greeks never regarded themselves as the inventors of the aulos: they saw it as an instrument of foreign origin (Aristoxenus classed it among the ekphula organa). Some writers considered it to have come from Libya, but most thought it was from Phrygia. If the lexicographers are to be believed, some of the instrument’s indigenous names passed into Greek (i.e. phōtinx, elumos). In line with the typically Greek habit of identifying a ‘first inventor’ (prōtos heuretēs), authors invariably attributed the aulos’s invention to one or another personnage, including Seirites, a Libyan ‘of the people of the Numidians’ (Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner, xiv.9, citing the historian Douris of Samos, an attribution taken up by Pollux, Dictionary, iv.174), the semi-legendary auletes Olympus and Hyagnis, and even the Phrygian satyr Marsyas. Beginning in the the first half of the 5th century bce, however, there were attempts to ‘Hellenize’ the origins of the aulos, a trend that became particularly dominant at the end of the 4th century bce. The instrument’s invention was no longer ascribed to some barbarian character but to a Greek divinity, either Apollo himself (Anticleides and Istrus, as quoted in Pseudo-Plutarch, On Music, 1136a–b) or Athena, who is described as immediately rejecting it (Pindar, Pythian, xii.7ff; Epicharmus as quoted by Athenaeus, op. cit., ii.84; and many Latin texts referring to the tradition).
The true origins of the aulos remain obscure, even though Mesopotamian, Cypriot, Egyptian and Anatolian iconographic records attest the existence of the double aulos at very early periods around the Mediterranean basin as well as in Cycladic culture (Minoan marble statuettes dating from c2200 bce). Nonetheless, the Hellenic aulos with two straight pipes of equal length always remained distinct from its supposed ancestor the Phrygian aulos, one of whose pipes ended in a joint that was either curved or made of horn, hence its Greek and, later, Latin name keras (‘horn’; fig.1).
The generic term aulos embraces a wide variety of instruments. As early as the 4th century bce Greek authors endeavoured to draw up analytical classifications, of which the clearest are found in the Aristotelian On Things Heard (804a) and Aristoxenus’s Harmonic Elements (ed. Meibom, 21). According to Aristoxenus (in Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner, xiv.36) there were four categories covering ‘more than three octaves’; from the highest to the lowest auloi they are the parthenian (‘of young girls’), the ‘childlike’ (paidikoi), auloi to accompany the kithara (kithariatērioi), the ‘perfect’ (teleioi) and the ‘more than perfect’ (huperteleioi), the two last-named being also grouped under the term ‘masculine’ (andreioi). This classification by range has no bearing upon the practical use, material, origin or form of the instrument. Yet, its terminology goes hand in hand with certain terms known from other sources in connection with musical practice: ‘Pythian aulos’, suitable for playing the nomos of the same name and described as ‘virile’ (thus placing it among the auloi teleioi); ‘kitharist auloi’, that is, auloi played with the kithara or an instrument of the same register; and the much-discussed aulos magadis, about which Greek scholars cannot agree, although it is likely that it had qualities similar to the magadis, a kind of harp capable of playing octaves (see A. Barker: ‘Che cos’era la “mágadis”?’, La musica in Grecia, ed. B. Gentili and R. Pretagostini, Rome, 1988, pp.96–107). This points to the simultaneous existence, if not of several coherent classifications, at least of a variety of terminology, for which evidence may be found in the works of non-specialist and specialist authors alike, both Greek and Latin.
Some terms used for the instruments were derived from the materials of construction: lōtos (the wood of the nettle-tree), buxus (a Latin term that came to be used for the box-wood tibia), kalamos and donax (used for rustic instruments made of reeds), and ebur (Lat. ‘ivory’). In addition there are several terms which came to be used typologically but whose original usage was related to geographical provenance: the hellenikos aulos (‘Greek aulos’), which embraced all auloi with straight pipes, as distinct from the elumos, thought to be an indigenous name for the phrugiaulos (‘Phrygian aulos’); the gingras, a small, very high-pitched instrument of Phoenician origin; and the phōtinx, an Egyptian aulos with a single pipe and possibly no reed. The term plagiaulos (literally ‘oblique aulos’) was used for the transverse flute with no reed.
No doubt the authors of the works On Auloi endeavoured to bring some kind of order into the terminology. A papyrus containing a young aulete’s contract of apprenticeship (see Bélis and Delattre) shows that the terms used in everyday language and by scholars were not those employed by professionals: instrumentalists, teachers of the aulos, and probably the instrument makers, too, had a kind of jargon of their own.
While amateur musicians and particularly shepherds made their own auloi from reeds, using fire to bore the holes, professional musicians always turned to specialist craftsmen (aulopoiai) to provide them with more durable, more attractive and, above all, more sophisticated instruments. Materials of a less perishable nature and more suitable for working were used for this purpose: ivory, bone, wood and metal, as the written sources and the remains of instruments show.
Makers of bone instruments used animals with long bones capable of providing sections measuring some 15 cm when worked, for instance, the legs of stags and the front legs of donkeys, which were much valued by Greek and Roman craftsmen alike. If Plutarch is to be believed, Theban craftsmen were the first to use the legs of stags, deer and fawns, which made the ‘most sonorous’ kinds of instruments (Banquet of Seven Sages, 150e–f). Latin authors provide evidence that donkey and deer bones continued in use throughout antiquity (Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis; Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, xvi.172; Antipater of Sidon, Anthologia palatina, 305, etc.); excavated auloi fragments confirm this, although examples made of the bones of sheep or cattle, materials not mentioned by classical authors, have also been discovered. A good many almost intact instruments, or sections of instruments, made of bone and ivory have survived (Alexandria, Tarento and Delos).
For wooden instruments, tree species with dense fibres (and therefore resistant to humidity) and long, thick, straight branches were chosen. Box (the Libyan lōtos, identified as the jujube tree of today) and nettle-tree – woods, as Pliny pointed out (xvi.212), that do not crack or split, are durable and not inclined to rot – were also popular with makers. A single text (Pollux, Dictionary, iv.71) mentions laurel ‘with the pith removed’. The only wooden auloi to have come down to us are a few complete instruments from Ptolemaic Egypt, now in the Louvre, and the famous Elgin Pipes in the British Museum, which appear to be made of sycamore. Metal seems not to have been used for the body of auloi, but only as a covering for a bone or ivory tube. References to bronze, orichalc or silver auloi are therefore probably not to be taken literally. However, some specimens discovered during excavations do have coverings or rings made of these costly, precious metals; archaeology thus complements the accounts of the written sources and corrects the details.
All the sources – written, pictorial and archaeological – show that the bore of the Greek aulos was strictly cylindrical, that is, of constant diameter. This is the characteristic of what the Greeks called the ‘Hellenic aulos’ (Aelian, quoted by Porphyry in his commentary on Ptolemy’s Harmonics, i.3). Only the Etruscans and then the Romans made instruments with a conical bore (see Jannot). All the remains of instruments conform to this rule, including the upper joints with their bulbous outer shape into which the reed was inserted (the auloi of Delos, the Agora of Athens, and Corinth, the Elgin Pipes in the British Museum, and the double aulos in the Louvre, made of a single piece of wood including a bulbous swelling, also have a constant internal bore). The diameter varies from one specimen to another. Among the 30 or so sections found on the island of Delos, internal diameters range from 7·7 mm to 15 mm; five fragments have a bore of 10·5 mm, and three a bore of 12 mm. The average is an internal diameter of about 10 mm, which in today’s terms seems very narrow, certainly much narrower than the bore of the modern clarinet or flute. However, there are notable and wide-ranging disparities, which must correspond to the different kinds of instrument, from the small auloi paidikoi, very narrow and with a high range, to the auloi huperteleioi, with large-bore pipes to produce a deeper sound. The walls of the huperteleioi are usually 1·5 mm thick, whether the instrument is made of wood, bone or metal, giving an external diameter of some 15 mm. To judge by the surviving complete instruments, each pipe might consist of five or six joints, each about 15 cm long, assembled on the tenon and mortise principle, with the tenon always at the lower end. The entire pipe might therefore reach a length of 60–70 cm. Since the maximum reach of the players’ fingers would not be greater than about 20 cm, it is evident that the holes arranged along these very long pipes could be stopped only with the aid of mechanical devices.
As a rule the holes (trupēmata, trēmata) are never shown on Attic or Apulian ceramics, even by a talented painter who would otherwise depict every detail (fig.2). This seems to have been a convention of stylization. The only exceptions are a few vases showing auletes holding pipes in their hands (the fragments of a red-figure Attic cup in the severe style of c490 bce in the Musée du Cinquantenaire, Brussels, Inv. A 1331; the bottom of the Marsyas Cup, 4th century bce, in Berkeley, University of California, Inv. 8.935). In the literature, too, authors show little concern for the practical aspects of instrument making; the most that can be learnt is that the holes were bored with a drill. Those passages in works of the Pythagorean school concerning the number and arrangement of the holes of auloi should not be taken as accurate descriptions but rather as ideas put forward by theorists anxious to give proof of their calculations of musical intervals. The only reliable evidence for this aspect of construction is archaeological.
It is likely that instruments made during the Archaic period, as with rustic instruments made of reeds, had only a few holes, four or five to each pipe, capable of being stopped by the fingers alone. A commentator on Horace quotes a passage from Varro’s De lingua latina, to the effect that tibiae in former times had only four holes; Varro claims to have seen such instruments in a temple of Marsyas. Sometime after the beginning of the 5th century bce the instrument played by professional auletes seems to have merited the description polutrētos (‘with many holes’) and poluphthongos (‘with many sounds’), much to the displeasure of thinkers such as Plato, a declared opponent of the virtuoso style and a champion of the (lost) cause of asceticism and simplicity in music. During the last quarter of the 4th century bce Aristotle alluded to ‘those who see an analogy’ between the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet and the interval separating the bombux (the lowest note of the aulos) from its highest note (Metaphysics, 1093a29–b4).
The holes were mostly on the upper surface of the pipe, but there were also holes underneath to be stopped by the thumb, as found in a number of joints made of bone, wood and ivory. Usually the thumb-hole was placed between two holes on the opposite surface, calling for the hand position frequently shown by painters of red-figure Attic ceramics, with the aulete’s thumb placed between his index and middle fingers, as on the Kleophrades amphora (fig.2). Such an arrangement probably avoided boring three holes dangerously close together on the same side of the pipe, especially in the upper joints of the instrument. The majority of holes are perfectly circular, with impeccably trimmed edges and no sign of repairs or errors; they are usually 6–7 mm in diameter, capable of being stopped with the finger-tips. There are also non-circular holes: those of an oval shape were probably intended to be partially stopped in order to produce intervals smaller than a semitone; others, in the shape of a cat’s eye (in tibiae from Pompeii), perhaps resulted from corrections to the tuning.
Certain sections of auloi discovered at Delos, in Athens, and near Dushanbe in Tajikistan, have rectangular holes along the length of the pipe. These were obviously too far apart to be stopped manually, and it is likely that they were operated by some form of mechanism (see §I, 5(v) below). Although the holes are usually strictly aligned along the pipe, the lowest hole in a joint is sometimes set slightly to one side so that it could easily be stopped by the shorter little finger. Holes arranged all over the surface of the pipe, as in the large Pompeiean tibiae, were obviously stopped by mechanical devices: the player’s fingers would not have been adequate, especially to reach the most distant holes. However, there is no reason to believe that the side holes were always meant to be stopped by the little finger; as vase painters often showed, this finger could be placed under the pipe, no doubt to provide better support, particularly when an instrument might be weighed down by bronze or silver rings or coverings.
Probably because it functioned as the organ of sound production, the reed was called ‘tongue’ (Gk. glōtta, glōttis; Lat. ligula or lingula: ‘little tongue’). Partially split straws were used for rustic instruments, but there is overwhelming evidence in the sources that a special kind of reed, known as zeugitēs (‘musical reeds’), was used throughout antiquity for most auloi and tibiae. The most sought-after reeds came from the floating islands of Lake Copais in Boeotia, north-west of Thebes (Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, iv.11; Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, xvi.168–72), where the best workshops specializing in double reed manufacture were located. The marshes of the Celenes region of Phrygia also provided material for high-quality reeds (Strabo, Geography, xii.8.15).
It is clear from Greek and Latin texts that makers took particular care over the harvesting and manufacture of their reeds (see Bélis and Péché, 1996). The plants were required to be of at least two years’ growth, and specimens described as ‘eunuchs’ (without plumes) were preferred. Until the middle of the 4th century bce the reeds were gathered in mid-September, but after the great floods of the lake in 338 bce the date was brought forward by three months to ‘a little before the solstice, or at the time of the solstice’. After harvesting, the reeds were bunched together and left to dry for several years; during the first winter they were wrapped and left out of doors. When spring came the reeds were cleaned and cut into sections at the internodes; only the middle part of a section, of a length no less than two palms (14·8 cm), was retained. After a final drying, the manufacture of the reed began.
A section was split in half lengthways to provide two symmetrical blades that would form the double reeds fitted to each of the two pipes of a single instrument in the hope that they would be perfectly ‘in tune’. Each blade was then folded in half, split, and one of the ends tied by thread wound around several times; the vibrating end was called the ‘mouth’ (stoma). The reed was inserted into the mouthpiece so that the bottom of the mouth was level with the olive-shaped swelling of the bulb (holmos) that fitted into the upper joint of the instrument (hupholmion). According to Theophrastus, the manufacturing process did not always go smoothly, many reeds being spoilt despite the craftsmen’s best efforts. Theophrastus emphasized the important point that ‘until the time of Antigenidas’, a virtuoso aulete active between 392 and 353 bce, reeds were rather hard; the maker would season them before use, and players would moisten them with saliva or even grease before playing. When the instruments were not being used, auletes would place the reeds in a small ivory box with a lid (a glōttokomeion), and this was attached to the case in which the pipes were kept.
As with the holes, the mechanisms are by convention never shown on Attic and Italic ceramics; certain polychrome items, for example, a small votive plaque from Pitsa, show joints in different colours, no doubt to illustrate the difference between bone and bronze (as Pindar confirms). Funnel-shaped projections do not appear until the Roman period; so far as can be determined, their function was to increase the length of the air column, by plugging the holes, in order to obtain chromatic notes. They are most frequently found on Phrygian auloi after the 2nd century bce. Although the name of these particular devices is not known, it appears that kerata was the term for the large horn-shaped mechanisms (see fig.1) which allowed the player to stop holes; a lever would cause a ring perforated by a hole of the same dimensions to slide around or up and down the tube, thus opening or closing the hole. The function of the kerata was also to increase the length of the air column, perhaps to obtain chromatic degrees.
From the 5th century bce onwards, written sources mention progress in the manufacture of auloi; it seems that during the course of the century the aulete Pronomus invented a means of modulating, but no further details of this technique are known. Other authors give the names of certain mechanisms but do not describe them in sufficient detail to permit definite identification; for instance, Aristotle explained how suringes allowed the aulos to play in octaves, and at the time of Demosthenes a famous aulete called Telephanes of Megara refused to fit his auloi with these devices, preferring to use a less virtuoso instrument, one in keeping with the musical style he favoured. It is possible that the suringes were slides, and although texts referring to them remain obscure, future examination of surviving instruments in a good state of preservation (e.g. an aulos from Pergamon and others from Tajikistan) may help to clarify this question.
It is worth emphasizing that the virtuoso players of antiquity never had to make do with rudimentary wind instruments of only approximate accuracy. Their instruments always issued from specialist workshops, some of which were extremely famous and attracted the custom of the best musicians of the time. So far, the only workshop to have been located precisely is that near the Temple of Apollo on Delos (see Bélis, 1988). Worked with great precision by highly qualified craftsmen using rare and valuable materials, fitted with ingenious mechanical devices and individually made to order to the detailed specification of instrumentalists, the Greek auloi and Roman tibiae were high-performance, powerful and precise instruments, evidence of the degree of perfection that could be attained by the technology of the ancient world.
An ‘aulete’ (Gk. aulētēs; Lat. tibicen) was a male player, either amateur or professional, of the aulos; ‘auletride’ (aulētris) was the name for a female player of the instrument. These terms should not be confused with ‘aulode’ (aulōdos), the singer accompanied by an aulete. The generic term aulētēs gave rise to a number of more specific (though often quite obscure) terms. They fall into three distinct categories, according to whether they denote (i) the kind of instrument played by the aulete, (ii) his function or employment, or (iii) his repertory.
(i) Kalamaulēs or, less commonly, kalamaulētēs, is literally ‘an aulete who plays a reed aulos’ with a single pipe (Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner, iv.78, quoting the Dialectics of Amerias of Macedonia). These two words were taken over directly into Latin, as seen for instance in the funerary inscription of the ‘calamaula’ Eutychianus and in the Notae Tironianae (107.2). Monaulos designates an aulos with a single pipe, but in an epigram of Hedylus quoted by Athenaeus (op. cit.) the word appears to be used poetically to refer to the player (i.e. Theon) accompanying mime. Ascaules, the Latinized form of askaulēs (a hybrid Greek term formed from askos, ‘beyond’, and aul[ēt]ēs), signifying a player of the bagpipes, is found in a poem by Martial (Epigrams, x.3.6–8); the true Latin equivalent, utricularius (deriving from uter, ‘beyond’), was applied to Nero, who towards the end of his life planned not only to play the lyre on stage but to perform on the hydraulis, as a choraulēs (see §1(iii) below) and as an utricularius (Suetonius, De vita Caesarum, vi [Nero], 54.1). Keraulēs or kerataulēs means, strictly, a player of the keras, a short trumpet made of horn but also, as mentioned above, the name for the Phrygian aulos, one pipe of which had a strongly curved end (keras). A very ancient term, keraulēs occurs in a fragment by Archilochus (c650 bce). A tumbaulēs, who played the aulos keras at funerals, was a kind of keraulēs. All the terms in this group are of infrequent occurrence.
(ii) A trieraulēs was an aulete on board a trireme of the Athenian war fleet who played the instrument to encourage the oarsmen and to set the stroke rate. In an inscription of the early 4th century bce (Inscriptiones graecae, ii, 2), the list of sailors on the warships includes a certain Sogenes of Siphnos, ‘aulētēs’, who is mentioned just after the three chief officers. The word trieraulēs is found in other, more literary texts, as in Demosthenes’ oration On the Crown (referring to Phormion, ‘slave of Dion of Phrearres’ and lover of the wife of Demosthenes’ rival Aeschines) and in Philodemus (On Music, iv.72). Spondaulēs, an ‘aulete of libation’, is found during the Roman period in inscriptions at Olympia though not elsewhere; however, other temples did recruit auletes annually for cult purposes, for example, at Delos, where the players were women.
(iii) The single, generic term aulētēs was used for the highly esteemed virtuoso players who gave recitals and also competed against each other, especially at sacred festivals. However, at the beginning of the Hellenistic period (the last quarter of the 4th century bce), other, more specific terms began to appear in connection with two musical genres – the solo aulos and the aulos with chorus, both of which were originally performed by auletes until they decided to specialize in one or the other category. Reflecting this specialization, the periphrases aulētēs puthikos (‘aulete [playing] the Pythian [nomos]’), kuklios aulētēs (‘cyclical aulete’) and aulētēs meta chorou (‘aulete with chorus’) were replaced by the simpler terms puthaulēs and choraulēs, which became current during the 1st century bce in literary texts as well as inscriptions. Latin either took over these Greek terms or adapted them slightly (puthaula and choraula). From the 1st century ce, a further distinction seems to have applied to those auletes who were employed in hierarchic companies of professional musicians: the prōtaulēs (prōtaulos is also found) was the ‘first aulete’, or head of the company, as distinct from the hupaulēs, the ‘second aulete’.
In both Greece and Rome, auletes might occupy very different places on the social scale, depending on the circumstances of their employment and their musical competence. In general, the profession was not highly esteemed; in fact ‘to lead an aulete’s life’ had a distinctly pejorative meaning. A number of proverbs and sayings depict auletes as unscrupulous, grasping, self-interested, vain and mindless; one lexicographer likened them to the parasites who played during sacrifices. Most were of humble origin or of very low rank and led a frugal existence; those like Phormion who served on the triremes were slaves; some were part of rich men’s households, and it was said that ‘whenever the cook does something wrong, the aulete gets the beating’ (Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner, ix.26, quoting The Islands by the comic writer Philyllius).
By contrast, the most prominent auletes had brilliant careers, which brought them great popularity and, according to Lucian (Harmonides), ensured their ‘fame and fortune’. They were recognized in the street; rich men or princes would offer them colossal fees to give private recitals or play in musical competitions; and various rulers, beginning with Philip of Macedonia and after him Alexander and all the Hellenistic monarchs, sought to attach them exclusively to their courts. Living on intimate terms with the rich and powerful, auletes would sometimes neglect their art in favour of a life of debauchery. Comic poets and satirists often ridiculed their jealousy, impertinence, profligacy, gluttony and heavy drinking; and various works tell of their eccentricities and love of luxury, their collections of precious stones, the price of the fabrics used for their costumes, and their efforts to acquire instruments made from the finest materials. Plutarch mentioned the famously wealthy aulete Ismenias of Thebes, who in about 350 bce paid the huge sum of seven talents for the auloi of a Corinthian instrument maker. The demand for instruments of high quality increased during the Hellenistic period and seems to have been particularly marked during the Roman empire, to judge by the splendour of the tibiae found at Pompeii, some of which are covered with silver, or have sections covered with bronze decorated to the highest degree of workmanship.
Earlier, in 5th-century Greece, virtuoso auletes, whatever their fame, apparently led more moderate lives and were less open to criticism. There are two possible explanations: first, in classical tragedies the aulete was less important than the poet and chorus; second, in the early pan-Hellenic competitions held every four years (the Pythian Games at Delphi and the Isthmian and Nemean festivals) the victor was rewarded by a simple wreath, whereas after the 3rd century bce it became customary to bestow in addition an increasingly large sum of money. Greek moralists lamented this change as marking the decline of art for art’s sake.
Young auletes ambitious for a professional career at the highest level were trained by experienced virtuosos, men who themselves might have been victors at the great competitions or else had acquired a sound reputation at the religious festivals organized by important cities such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes and Delos. From the end of the 5th century bce Thebes was predominant in both the number and excellence of its auletes, among whom were Pronomus, Ismenias, Antigenidas, Timotheus and Caphisias; representatives of the Theban school, acknowledged by all Greeks to be the best, were paid high fees to pass on their art to young men of means.
First, however, a prospective aulete had to persuade his chosen master to accept him. A truly demanding teacher would have only three or four pupils at a time, who, like pupils of the various philosophical schools, would usually live with him for several years. Fees were completely at the master’s discretion and were undoubtedly very high. Timotheus of Thebes, a famous aulete of the last quarter of the 4th century bce, charged double any instrumentalist who came to him from another school, on the grounds that he would have twice the amount of work to do, first ridding the newcomer of his bad habits and then teaching him better ones. Greek and Latin authors stress the time and effort necessary to acquire perfect mastery of the instrument, and there is much evidence of the toughness of the great teachers: a pupil found at fault would be ridiculed in front of the others and might well have his ears boxed or even be beaten; errors of style were punished particularly severely by purist teachers. There was great competition between the schools. Some famous auletes would take their pupils to hear their rivals’ followers to show them ‘the wrong way to do it’. Vehement criticisms of technique and style were often voiced publicly: ‘You played a wrong note, just like all the pupils of Timotheus’, a member of the audience shouted at one aulete during a concert.
Because of the intense competition to reach the top rank of players, a newly formed virtuoso would have a fierce struggle ahead of him, particularly in the early stages. Unless he managed to perform brilliantly in a competition or gain public approval by some other means, he would have little hope of making his name. Honorific and funerary inscriptions show that a musical career could begin very early; child auletes took part in special competitions before going on to compete against adults. Greek writers mention several exceptional careers, including that of Sacadas of Argos, whose six successive victories at the quadrennial Pythian festival placed him in the unrivalled position of ‘best musician’ for a period of 24 years. Many virtuoso auletes, like their singer or kithara-playing colleagues, were constantly travelling, and most took part in the regular or occasional competitions organized by great cities or rulers throughout the Mediterranean basin.
Less technically accomplished auletes, who were unable to enter the most prestigious competitions, might belong to the companies of musicians and actors known as dionusiakoi technitai; those of lesser ability still could join smaller troupes (sumphōniakoi), working within a limited geographical area for lower fees. During the Hellenistic period, the three most important groups of technitai were based in Attica (at Teos in Ionia and at Isthmia and Nemea) and were granted financial and diplomatic privileges; participation in the musical festivals of the most famous temples was shared out among them. Various inscriptions relating to the powerful technitai companies and a number of papyri from Egypt provide limited information about the circumstances of engagement of these musicians. The evidence, in the form of contracts containing different types of clause, not only indicates the level of professionalism attained by the musicians, but also includes details about payment – whether in money or in kind (bread, oil, wine), the content and duration of programmes, the instruments required, the penalty for breaking a contract, and the means of conveying the musicians’ most valuable possessions (instruments and clothing).
In post-Republic Rome tibia players, except for those soloists who managed their own careers, were grouped into colleges (collegia) or corporations, which were genuinely professional institutions. Like their Greek predecessors, the members took part in public ceremonies, particularly divine worship (no sacrifice in the ancient world conformed to the prescribed ritual without musical accompaniment on an aulos). The auletes who led troops into battle in Sparta and Crete belonged to a rather different category from the rest, one about which little is known.
Women musicians were not allowed to perform in public in ancient Greece, either at the competitions or in recitals. However, like the psaltriai (women string instrument players), the aulētrides and the Roman tibicinae might sometimes be both excellent musicians and women of very easy virtue, hired to enliven banquets and all-male parties. Aristotle’s The Constitution of the Athenians (50.2) explains that the ten city astunomoi prohibited their being paid more than the legally fixed tariff of two drachmas, and that the proxenoi would institute criminal proceedings should that sum be exceeded (Hyperides, For Euxenippus, 3). If several people wanted to hire the same musician, the astunomoi decided the matter by lot.
A great many auletrides came from Aegion and Piraeus and were the most sought after. The names of some have come down to us, either because a painter wrote a woman’s name on a vase (e.g. Helike, on a stamnos painted by Smikros; and Syko, ‘the Fig’, on a krater painted by Euphronios), or because they became high-class prostitutes or the mistresses of historically important men. One of these musicians was Lamia, the mistress of Demetrius Poliorcetes (c300 bce), who scandalized all Greece by aspiring to take part in the aulos competition in the Pythian festival at Delphi; another was Bromias, whose lover Phayllus, tyrant of Phocis, stole offerings for her from the temple of Delphi (c355 bce). In general, however, the ambition of such a girl was to escape the wretchedness of her life by winning the love of a young man of good family who would buy her from her pimp and marry her: this is the subject of a number of Greek and Latin comedies (comoediae togatae). Among the least fortunate of the tibicinae were the ambubaiae, generally of Syrian origin, who were brought to Rome to play in the streets or taverns.
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A. Bélis: ‘L’aulos phrygien’, Revue archéologique, xlviii (1986), 21–40
A. Bélis: ‘Charnières ou auloi?’, Revue archéologique, l (1988), 109–18
A. Bélis: ‘Studying and Dating Ancient Greek Auloi and Roman Tibiae’, The Archaeology of Early Music Cultures [II]: Berlin 1988, 233–48
A. Bélis: ‘Les termes grecs et latins désignant des spécialités musicales’, Revue de philologie, lxii (1988), 227–50
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A. Bélis and D. Delattre: ‘A propos d’un contrat d’apprentissage d’aulète’, Papiri documentari greci, ed. M. Capasso (Galatina, 1993), 105–64
A. Bélis: ‘Du bon usage du roseau: Théophraste, Recherches sur les plantes (IV, 11, 1–9)’ L’homme, le végétal et la musique, ed. J. Coget (Parthenay, 1996), 10–18
V. Péché: ‘Pline l’Ancien: Histoire naturelle (XVI, 168–172)’, ibid., 18–29
A. Bélis: ‘Timothée de Thèbes’, Latomus (forthcoming)