(fl c580 bce). Greek aulos player and poet. He wrote lyric and elegiac poems, but none has survived. He provided his elegiac verses with musical settings (during the central classical period elegy had no accompaniment). According to Pseudo-Plutarch (On Music, 1134a–c, 1135c), he was a skilled aulete who three times carried off the prize at the Pythian games, beginning in 586 bce. The reawakening of musical culture at Sparta after Terpander’s great initial changes was ascribed to Sacadas and a few others who kept the exalted Terpandrian manner but introduced new rhythms.
Pausanias’s Description of Greece (ii.22.8–9, iv.27.7, vi.14.9–10, ix.30.2, x.7.4) contains the additional point that Sacadas was the first to perform the ‘Pythian aulos tune’ at Delphi. This was not an auloedic Nomos but an auletic one, that is an extended piece for solo aulos in which the music itself is highly descriptive or evocative. In some way Sacadas portrayed the victorious combat of Apollo with the serpent, the Python. Strabo (Geography, ix.3.10) provides a rather detailed description of such a piece composed of five parts, the last of which imitates the final hissing of the python as it expires, but he did not specifically attribute it to Sacadas. A somewhat different description of the piece (though still in five parts), specifically attributed to Sacadas, is provided by lexicographer Pollux (Onomasticon, iv.78, 84). Of course, certainly more than one piece may have existed on this subject. In addition to the Pythic nomos, Sacadas is also credited (Pseudo-Plutarch, On Music, 1134a–b) with the Trimere (three-part) nomos, consisting of a strophe in each of the three basic tonoi, Dorian, Phrygian and Lydian.
The aulos nomoi of Sacadas were still popular more than two centuries later: in 369 bce, at the founding of Messene, the builders worked to the accompaniment of his Boeotian melodies and those composed by the Theban aulete Pronomus (Pausanias, iv.27.7). The range and brilliance of his accomplishments made him the outstanding musical performer of the 6th century bce; Pindar composed a prelude (prooimion) in his honour (Pausanias, ix.30.2 = Bowra, frag.282a).
H. Abert: ‘Sakadas’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, i/A/2 (Stuttgart, 1920), 1768–9
J.M. Edmonds, ed. and trans.: Lyra graeca, ii (London and Cambridge, MA, 1924 2/1928/R), 4–11
C.M. Bowra, ed.: Pindari carmina cum fragmentis (Oxford, 1935, 2/1947/R)
H. Grieser: Nomos: ein Beitrag zur griechischen Musikgeschichte (Heidelberg, 1937), 69–70
M. Wegner: Das Musikleben der Griechen (Berlin, 1949), 146
D.A. Campbell, ed. and trans.: Greek Lyric, iii (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1991), 202–7
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN