(fl Rhegium [now Reggio Calabria], c400 bce). Greek writer from the south-west coast of Italy. He was the author of a treatise (now lost) On the Ancient Poets and Musicians, a major source for portions of the Pseudo-Plutarch On Music. The musical writings of the philosopher known as Heraclides Ponticus may have been an intermediary source. Pseudo-Plutarch mentioned the author, title and contents of this treatise in On Music (1132e, 1133f, 1134d–f); at least a portion of the material on Terpander's supposed debt to Homer and Orpheus (1132f) and concerning Clonas and Archilochus (1133a) may also derive from Glaucus.
Glaucus's work apparently showed a practical concern with compositions and composer-poets; the latter he attempted to arrange in a sequence based on the line of succession from master to pupil. His familiarity with technical details recalls the expertise of Damon, his contemporary, and foreshadows that of Aristoxenus. Conjectures that he, like Aristoxenus, came from a family of musicians and was himself a professional have no support except his stress on the prior development of aulos playing and singing to aulos accompaniment. To be sure, this emphasis is strikingly evident. It provides a welcome counterbalance to the usual concentration on the kithara; moreover, it came at a time when the aulos had few champions but many attackers, among them Aristophanes. The influence Glaucus exercised was probably more extensive than the available evidence would suggest.
E. Jacoby: ‘Glaukos (36)’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vii/1 (Stuttgart, 1910), 1417–20
B. Einarson and P.H. De Lacy, ed. and trans.: Plutarch's Moralia, xiv (London and Cambridge, MA, 1967), 363ff
A. Barker, ed.: ‘The Plutarchian Treatise On Music’, Greek Musical Writings, i: The Musician and his Art (Cambridge, 1984), 205–57
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN