A trumpet-like instrument (classified as an Aerophone), the most important of the Roman brass. It consisted of a straight cylinder of bronze or brass or, less frequently, iron or ivory, about 1·2 to 1·5 metres in length, and flared at the end (see illustration). Usually it had a detachable mouthpiece of horn or ivory. Modern models produce about six tones of the overtone series. Several classical references to the instrument as ‘terribilis’ or ‘rauca’ suggest that its tone must have been more strident than that of the modern trumpet. Similar instruments existed in ancient Greece, Israel and Egypt, but the Roman version was directly derived from the Etruscans. Several authors, both Greek and Roman, attributed the invention of the overall type to the Etruscans; although this is obviously untrue, it serves to illustrate the prominence of the Etruscans in the area of brass instruments.
In Etruscan pictorial representations the tuba appears with other brass instruments such as the Cornu and Lituus as an instrument of solemn processions for funerals, civic religious ceremonies and military triumphs. The tuba was used by the Romans for these and other purposes: there survives a rich collection of iconographic and literary evidence.
Although the tuba was not used as frequently in cult music as the tibia or the lyre it had a prominent and even privileged position there. Its players, the tubicines sacrorum populi romani, came to enjoy the rank of priest in imperial times. Each year on 23 March and 23 May a ceremony called the tubilustrium took place in which the trumpets used on cult, state and military occasions were blessed.
Above all the Roman tuba functioned as a military instrument: it accompanied marching, sounded the attack and the retreat, and joined the cornu in the heat of battle where its function was both to inspire the Romans and to strike fear into the enemy. Distinctions between the tasks of the various military instruments, namely, tuba, cornu, lituus and Buccina, are seldom clear, but Vegetius's differentiation between the two most important – tuba and cornu – seems plausible. In his Epitoma rei militaris he claimed that the cornu relayed commands to the standard bearers while the louder tuba announced them to the army at large. A surprising number of these instruments was employed; the legio III Augusta listed 39 tubicines and 36 cornicines.
The tuba was also played in the arena: only the Hydraulis is mentioned more frequently in this connection.
G. Fleischhauer: Etrurien und Rom, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, ii/5 (Leipzig, 1964, 2/1978)
D. Charlton: ‘New Sounds for Old: Tam-Tam, Tuba Curva, Buccin’, Soundings, iii (1973), 39–47
JAMES W. McKINNON