(b Hermione [now Kastri], Argolis; fl c530–20 bce). Greek lyric poet and the earliest music theorist. According to Herodotus (vii.6.3), Lasus was at Athens at some time between 527 and 514 bce. A brief fragment of the text of one of his compositions has survived, the beginning of a hymn to Demeter (Edmonds, frag.1). During his lifetime he was famous chiefly as a composer of dithyrambs; Aristophanes (Wasps, 1410) referred to a competition between him and Simonides, and in the late classical period dithyrambs were spuriously attributed to him. By tradition he was one of the teachers of Pindar.
The original (wrongly emended) text of the Byzantine Suda and a brief reference by Pseudo-Plutarch (On Music, 1141c) credit him with a radical innovation: the introduction of dithyrambic rhythm and tempo (agōgē, actually a broader concept; see Privitera, p.75n.) into other forms of composition. Music sung to the kithara would thus have become more like music sung to aulos accompaniment: for example, the diatonic whole tone may have been subdivided into microtones. Lasus cannot, however, be termed a forerunner of the dithyrambists associated with the ‘new music’ movement; it is significant that the fragment of the Cheiron of Pherecrates preserved by Pseudo-Plutarch (On Music, 1141d–42a) does not list him among the ravishers of Mousikē.
Aristotle's famous pupil Aristoxenus wrote in the Harmonics (i.3; da Rios, p.7) that Lasus did research in acoustics, and three centuries later Theon of Smyrna (Hiller, p.59) made a similar reference, associating him with Pythagorean inquiry. The link here between practice and theory, if genuine, is unusual.
Research has broadly confirmed the Suda's statement that Lasus ‘was the first to write a treatise On Music’. His ideas and gnomic sayings were considered subtle and profound at an early period – Aristophanes parodied one of them in the Wasps (1411) – and he was sometimes numbered among the Seven Sages. In the 5th century ce Martianus Capella (On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury, ix.936) claimed that originally (primo) Lasus distinguished the harmonic, rhythmic and metrical aspects of music; his claim echoes a tradition believed to go back through Aristides Quintilianus and perhaps Marcus Terentius Varro to an original source. From the 5th century bce Lasus's theories were evidently heeded and remembered, whether or not he ever wrote them down.
J.M. Edmonds, ed. and trans.: Lyra graeca, ii (London and Cambridge, MA, 1924, 2/1928/R), 222ff
D.L. Page, ed.: Poetae melici graeci (Oxford, 1962), 364ff
D.A. Campbell, ed. and trans.: Greek Lyric, iii (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1991), 296–311
H. Abert: ‘Lasos (2)’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, xii/1 (Stuttgart, 1924), 887–8
A.W. Pickard-Cambridge: Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy (Oxford, 1927, rev. 2/1962 by T.B.L. Webster), 12ff, 23–4
F. Lasserre, ed.: Plutarque: De la musique (Olten, 1954), 34ff
L. Richter: Zur Wissenschaftslehre von der Musik bei Platon und Aristoteles (Berlin, 1961), 14–15
G.A. Privitera: Laso di Ermione nella cultura ateniese e nella tradizione storiografica (Rome, 1965); reviewed by E.K. Borthwick, Classical Review, new ser., xvii (1967), 146–7
G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967), 645–6
G.F. Brussich: ‘Laso d'Ermione, testimonianze e frammenti’, Quaderni triestini per il lessico della lirica corale greca, iii (1975–6), 83–135
G. Comotti: ‘Pitagora, Ippaso, Laso e il metodo sperimentale’, Harmonia mundi: musica e filosofia nell'antichità: Rome 1989, 20–29
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN