One of the more common and earlier terms for the Greek angular harp (see Magadis, and Trigōnon). The word appears a number of times in the Eastern Greek author Anacreon (fl 6th century bce). Although the term itself is Greek (from pēgnuein, ‘to fasten’), the instrument is associated with the territory of Lydia by authors such as Pindar, Herodotus and Sophocles, and there is no reason to doubt that it came from that area.
See also Greece, §I, 5(iii)(b).
M. Maas and J.M. Snyder: Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece (New Haven, CT, 1989), 147–9
M.L. West: Ancient Greek Music (Oxford, 1992), 71–2
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 272–5
JAMES W. McKINNON