(Gk., also phorbea, phorbaia; Lat. capistrum).
A mouthband shown in many illustrations of auletes playing the double aulos. The term also refers to a horse's halter, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the device shown in a particularly detailed view of an aulos player on a red-figure amphora (c480 bce) attributed to the Kleophrades Painter and preserved in the British Museum (E 270; see Aulos, fig.2).
The phorbeia is mentioned by Plutarch (On the Control of Anger, 456b–c) and described by scholiasts and some of the lexicographers. The comments tend to be brief, and the function of the phorbeia remains unclear in the literary and iconographic sources. Plutarch observes that Marsyas employed special devices – a phorbeia and peristomios – when he played the aulos. He explains these terms by quoting two lines now commonly attributed to Simonides: ‘Marsyas, it seems, suppressed the violence of his breath with a phorbeia and peristomios, composed his countenance and concealed the distortion: “He fitted his forehead locks with gleaming gold and his blustering mouth with leather straps and bound behind”’. A peristomios is something that goes around a mouth. Plutarch is probably using the terms as synonyms, and the two of them together convey a reasonably clear sense of the appearance of the phorbeia. The reference to Marsyas's ‘blustering mouth’ evokes the hissing and spitting sounds that emerge from a poorly sealed embouchure, especially as the pressure of the performer's breath increases.
Hesychius's Lexicon defines the phorbeia as a skin placed around the mouth of the aulete to prevent his lips from parting. Experiment with reconstructions demonstrates the aptness of this definition. With two mouthpieces, the difficulty of maintaining a tight seal is considerable, especially over a long period. The phorbeia allows the performer to maintain a relaxed embouchure: by sealing the mouth and holding the lips together against the pressure of the breath, it prevents the reed from being choked by a tight embouchure – or stopped from beating altogether – and allows the lips to exercise sensitive adjustments in pressure on the reed. In addition, with the phorbeia, the mouthpiece itself can easily be withdrawn by increments from the mouth in order to shorten the reed; without the phorbeia, it is difficult to maintain a tight seal around the mouthpieces while moving them in and out of the mouth to adjust pitch and timbre. Contrary to common conjecture, the phorbeia does not provide special support for cheeks, enabling them to act like a bellows, except in the sense that it allows the facial muscles to relax because they do not need to maintain a sealed embouchure. There is no easy explanation for the fact that aulos players are often shown without the phorbeia, but experiment does indicate that short and simple phrases can be played on the auloi without greatly taxing the embouchure. Thus, it may be conjectured that the phorbeia was introduced to allow auletes to play the longer, more difficult compositions characteristic of the innovatory style of the auletic competitions. Players of the salpinx, too, often wore the phorbeia, which must have served the same purpose as it did for the aulos. In the illustration of Epiktetos (c520–490) for an eye kylix, a satyr wears the phorbeia while sounding the salpinx over his shoulder (London, British Museum, E 3).
The phorbeia is rarely shown without the aulos – or some other instrument – in the aulete's mouth, but one kylix (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, kylix 96.9.18) does show an aulete adjusting the phorbeia while holding both auloi in his left hand at his waist; the illustration clearly indicates that the phorbeia has a slit or hole for each mouthpiece (confirmed by a volute krater in Tarento, Museo Nazionale, IG 8263). As the aulete prepares to play, the mouthpieces must then be inserted through the holes into the mouth.
A.A. Howard: ‘The Aulos or Tibia’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, iv (1893), 29–30
C. Sachs: The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940), 138–9
H. Becker: Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der antiken und mittelalterlichen Rohrblattinstrumente (Hamburg, 1966), 120–29
D. Paquette: L'instrument de musique dans la céramique de la Grèce antique: études d'organologie (Paris, 1984)
A. Bélis: ‘La phorbéia’, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, cx (1986), 205–18
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 218–22
THOMAS J. MATHIESEN