(fl ?c700 bce). Ancient Phrygian aulete and composer. Possibly a legendary figure, he was credited with the introduction of instrumental music into Greece (Pseudo-Plutarch, On Music, 1132f), and specifically of auletic nomoi (see Nomos), which became established in public worship. It is unclear whether this Olympus is a descendant of the one supposed to have been taught by Marsyas or whether the two figures named Olympus are one and the same (On Music, 1133d–f; cf Suda, see under ‘Olympos’). In any event, according to Aristoxenus (as quoted in Pseudo-Plutarch's On Music) he ‘invented’ the enharmonic genus, the Lydian mode and rhythmic patterns such as the prosodiac, choreic and bacchic (1134f–1135a, 1136c, 1141b and 1143b).
The figure of Olympus is evidently shadowy; to him were attributed the historical innovations, uncertainly comprehended in later times, which were introduced into Greek music from Asia Minor and especially from Phrygia around the end of the 8th century bce. After that time 7th-century art shows that the aulos came into general use, and certain auletic nomoi gained lasting acceptance. Three centuries later poets still referred to compositions of this type as the work of Olympus (Aristophanes, Knights, 9; Telestes of Selinus: Edmonds, frags.2–3), and philosophers praised them for their acknowledged power to influence the Ethos of men with a sense of the divine (Plato, Symposium, 215c1–6; Aristotle, Politics, 1340a8–12). Pseudo-Plutarch attributed several famous nomoi to Olympus (1133d–f), described the general simplicity of his style (1137a–b) and analysed the ethos of the Athena nomos (1143b–c).
J.M. Edmonds, ed. and trans.: Lyra graeca, iii (London and Cambridge, MA, 1927, 2/1928/R), 277
H. Husmann: ‘Olympos, die Anfänge der griechischen Enharmonik’, JbMP 1938, 29–44
M. Vogel: Die Enharmonik der Griechen (Düsseldorf, 1963)
G. Wille: ‘Musik, §A, 3’, Lexikon der alten Welt, ed. C. Andresen (Zürich and Stuttgart, 1965)
B. Einarson and P.H. De Lacy, ed. and trans.: Plutarch's Moralia, xiv (London and Cambridge, MA, 1967), 343–455
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN