(fl late 5th century bce). Greek music theorist. A highly influential figure of the Periclean age. Damon had paramount importance among the pre-Socratics for doctrines of musical ethos. Dance and song ‘necessarily arise when the soul is in some way moved’, he maintained (Diels, 37/B/6), aware that purposive action originates in the soul. He went on to voice the primary tenet of all musical ethics, claiming that ‘liberal [i.e. befitting a free man] and beautiful songs and dances create a similar soul, and the reverse kind creates a reverse kind of soul’ (ibid.). According to a late author, Aristides Quintilianus (ii.14; Winnington-Ingram, 80.26–9; Diels, 37/B/7), this creative act was explained as having a twofold nature, masculine and feminine:
That notes, even of continuous melody [i.e. one that follows scalar order], mold through similarity a nonexistent ethos in children and in those already advanced in age and bring out a latent ethos, the disciples of Damon showed. In the harmoniai transmitted by him, it is possible to discover that sometimes the feminine, sometimes the masculine of the movable notes either dominate or have been employed to a lesser degree or not at all, since it is evident that a harmonia is utilized in accord with the ethos of each soul. Therefore, of the parts of melic composition, the so-called repetition is considered the most useful on each occasion in the selection of the most necessary notes.
A number of noteworthy concepts appear in this passage: similarity, continuity and the particularity of each soul. Similarity (homoiotēs) was in all likelihood a Damonian principle originally separate from the Platonic principle of mimesis which incorporated it. The element of continuity appears to be intimately bound up with the process of repetition (petteia), which Aristides named as an important technique of the Damonian school. On the other hand, the phrase ‘each soul’ suggests late theory. No early source, moreover, connects Damon or his followers with the male–female concept; nor does the antithesis appear to have been a part of the early history of Greek music in any case.
As Philodemus in his On Music (Kemke, 55; Diels, 37/B/4) presented Damon's belief, the virtues of the liberal and beautiful soul included ‘not only courage and moderation but also justice’, and ‘in singing and playing the lyre, a boy ought properly to reveal’ these qualities. The Platonic Socrates (Republic, iii, 400c1–4; Diels, 37/B/9) notes that Damon applied ethical valuation to metrical complexes as well as rhythms, taking these two elements separately or in combination. Finally there is the statement, attributed to Damon by Socrates in the Republic (iv, 424c; Diels, 37/B/10), that ‘musical styles are nowhere altered without [changes in] the most important laws of the state’. This thesis, found in other cultures as well (e.g. that of ancient China), usually issues from a conservative or even reactionary point of view. Yet on several occasions Aristophanes, an arch-conservative, attacked Damonian positions (Clouds, 647–51, 961–71; Frogs, 729, 1491–9) as the chief spokesman for the poet-composers in their hostility towards the new, dogmatic philosophy of the Damonian school.
The possibility that Damon may have been a radical rests further, and chiefly, on a careful interpretation of the evidence of Plato. The passages in Plato's dialogues that seem to praise Damon (Laches, 180d2–3, 197d1–5, 200a2–3; Republic, iii, 400b1–c6, 424c5–6) take on an altered significance when one recalls the writer's dislike of versatility, technical skill and professionalism. Again, praise even from Socrates had no binding force on Plato himself. Yet Damon was viewed with respect: Plato saw him as no mere teacher of the elements of music but a professor of musical theory and ethics (mousikos) and evidently of ‘logic’ and political science as well. In later times, Isocrates (xv, 235) and Plutarch (Pericles, 4) were to call him a Sophist; his association with Prodicus, Protagoras and Agathocles bears out the claim.
When Aristotle (Politics, viii, 1340b5–6) mentions statements about modal ethos ‘made by persons who have devoted special study to this branch of education’, he may be referring to the Damonian school. These harmonic theorists had already been attacked in the early 4th century by the author of an anonymous diatribe, preserved in the so-called Hibeh musical papyrus, against doctrines of ethos. It cites various aspects of harmonicist method and theory: comparative criticism (sunkrisis), a strongly theoretical bent, insistence upon amateur status and the belief that music can make men just. Although these points are not always Platonic, they are usually Damonian. The final one eventually reappears in the passage already cited from the treatise by Philodemus, who rightly countered elsewhere (On Music, iv.24.9–35; Kemke, 92–3) that Plato did not equate justice with music but claimed only that the two are analogous. The tradition that Damon spoke before the court of the Areopagus, questioned by Philodemus (On Music, i.11.17–19, iv.34.1–5; Kemke, 7, 104–5), is insecurely based. It is equally doubtful that he ‘discovered the relaxed Lydian mode’, as stated in the Pseudo-Plutarch, On Music (1136e). At the same time, tradition would hardly have associated a noted conservative with one of the harmoniai which Plato condemned and banned in the Republic.
Although continental scholarship of the mid-20th century ascribed far too much to Damon, he was unquestionably a formidable figure. He expanded and codified doctrines of ethos in a notable and perhaps unparalleled degree; his view that music is connected with the soul's motion provided one of the main theoretical foundations on which Plato was to build; and his name enjoyed wide renown until the Roman period and even later (Cicero, On Oratory, iii.33; Martianus Capella, ix.926).
H. Diels, ed.: Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin, 1903, rev. 11/1964/R by W. Kranz; Eng. trans., 1946, 2/1949/R)
W.J.W. Koster: Rhythme en metrum bij de Grieken van Damon tot Aristoxenus (Groningen, 1940)
A.J. Janssens: ‘De muziekpsycholoog Damoon van Oa’, Tijdschrift voor philosophie, iii (1941), 499–566, 649–712
E. Ryffel: ‘Eukosmia: ein Beitrag zur Wiederherstellung des Areopagiticos des Damon’, Museum helveticum, iv (1947), 23–38 [see also Lasserre, 74–9]
F. Lasserre, ed.: Plutarque: De la musique (Olten, 1954), 53–95
W.D. Anderson: ‘The Importance of Damonian Theory in Plato’s Thought’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, lxxxvi (1955), 88–102
C. del Grande: ‘Damone metrico’, Filologia minore (Milan and Naples, 1956, 2/1967), 197–214
G.F. Else: ‘“Imitation” in the Fifth Century’, Classical Philology, liii (1958), 73–90
E. Moutsopoulos: La musique dans l'oeuvre de Platon (Paris, 1959), 175–85
K. Ziegler: ‘Damon (2)’, Der kleine Pauly, ed. K. Ziegler and W. Sontheimer, i (Stuttgart, 1964), 1376–7
W.D. Anderson: Ethos and Education in Greek Music (Cambridge, MA, 1966)
C. Lord: ‘On Damon and Music Education’, Hermes, cvi (1978), 32–43
R.W. Wallace: ‘Damone di Oa ed i suoi successori: un'analisi delle fonti’, Harmonia mundi: musica e filosofia nell'antichitŕ: Rome 1989, 30–53
M.L. West: Ancient Greek Music (Oxford, 1992), 242–9
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN