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Early Christian writers often use musical metaphors. In particular, in the opening chapter of Clemens of Alexandria's Protrepticus Christ is presented as the 'new son (ᾀ̃σμα καινόν) which brings order and harmony to the universe. This paper aims to demonstrate that there is more to this image than a display of rhetorical ability: Clemens' vocabulary and the way in which he describes the different steps of the tuning process show that he was aware of music theory and conceived of the action of the divine logos as the making of a real musical scale, perhaps not very different from the ones used by the musicians of his time.

Section XIX of pseudo-Aristotle’s Problems provides a vivid testimony of reflections on singing and its relationship to musical instruments in the Peripatetic school during Aristotle’s life or not long after his death. Several problems in the collection deal with the theme of the difficulty encountered by singers in the performance of particular notes, the reasons for the difficulty, and how to overcome it. Other problems, using rather elliptical and not particularly transparent language, lead us to understand that ancient listeners may have organized two simultaneous melodic lines hierarchically. In general, these brief texts appear to have been created starting from specific musical listening situations and seem to presume the point of view of a common listener rather than that of a philosopher. Given the theoretical approach of most of the works about music that have survived from ancient Greece, this feature makes them a source of enormous musicological interest.

The overall sense is clear enough: the Pythagoreans called the fourth συλλαβή, the fifth δι' ὀξειᾶν and the octave ἁρμονία. We are also told that the octave is a σύστημα, which is a musical structure resulting from an acceptable combination of two or more smaller intervals – in this case, of a fourth and a fifth. But the received text appears problematic: in particular, the double accusative τὴν δὲ διὰ πασῶν … ἁρμονίαν occurring in connection with the dative τῷ συστήματι seems quite difficult to account for. The phrase is perhaps to be taken as meaning that the Pythagoreans ‘posed’ or ‘defined’ the octave as ἁρμονία ‘because of the σύστημα’; nevertheless, the syntax still sounds troubled and, as Andrew Barker has suggested, the text is very likely to be corrupt in some way. An easy emendation would be τὴν δὲ διὰ πασῶν τῷ σύστημα <εἶναι> … (‘they defined the octave as ἁρμονία because of its being a σύστημα, as Theophrastus also said’). The corruption could have taken place in two steps, the accidental loss of εἶναι having caused the correction of the ungrammatical τῷ σύστημα into the dative case.

This article aims at investigating the melodic and performative aspects of the parodos of Euripides' Orestes. On the one hand, some textual clues seem to shed light on the particular type of vocal emission that the poet/composer required from the chorus; on the other hand, scholia prove useful for reconstructing the impact of this unique piece of poetry and music on ancient audiences and commentators.

Section XIX of pseudo-Aristotle’s Problems provides a vivid testimony of reflections on singing and its relationship to musical instruments in the Peripatetic school during Aristotle’s life or not long after his death. Several problemsin the collection deal with the theme of the difficulty encountered by singers in the performance of particular notes, the reasons for the difficulty, and how to overcome it. Other problems, using rather elliptical and not particularly transparent language, lead us to understand that ancient listeners may have organized two simultaneous melodic lines hierarchically. In general, these brief texts appear to have been created starting from specific musical listening situations and seem to presume the point of view of a common listener rather than that of a philosopher. Given the theoretical approach of most of the works about music that have survived from ancient Greece, this feature makes them a source of enormous musicological interest.

The author of the De musica recalls a popular scene from the Iliad — Achilles singing heroic verses on his lyre — to show what kind of music is appropriate for a hero. This paper provides an inquiry into the compiler's possible sources, taking into account the philosophical debate on anger and on musical ethos in general. The mention of Chiron as Achilles' music teacher is also particularly meaningful with reference to the place of music in the so-called enkyklios paideia.

In ancient Greek and Roman writings the sound of the human voice and that of the aulos (a double-reed aerophone) are often juxtaposed in a rich web of similes, more-or-less consciously employed metaphors and analogies. There are numerous examples of this in philosophical and literary texts, as well as in rhetorical, medical and, of course, musical treatises. This is because the instrument provides a model which makes it possible to represent the mechanism of human sound-production, not only at the level of emission, but also in relation to the formation of phonemes. If we focus on the semantic field of spoken or sung vocal performance - by an actor, singer or orator - we can note how in the Greek language there is a wide overlap with that of instrumental performance: the orator-actor is imagined as a performer whose instrument is his own body. Latin rhetorical treatises (Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero, Quintilian) also make wide use of images relating to the tibia (the Roman equivalent of the aulos) in describing the qualities and defects of the orator's voice. This metaphorical link was so strong that it resisted the fierce opposition of the first Christians to pagan symbolism, including that involving musical instruments: in Prudentius's Apotheosis (4th-5th century), God is still depicted as a skilled tibia player in the act of creating souls through insufflation.

Since the earliest stages of Greek and Roman civilizations to their most mature developments, music has played a key role in education. On the one hand, the practice of music shapes the identities of different communities and groups; on the other hand, it is thought to have bearing on people's souls and character. Accordingly, musical education is by no means a matter of personal taste: in some Archaic poleis it is supervised by the state, and in subsequent periods it has pride of place in the philosophical debate. With the advent of musical professionalism, the educations of average citizens and that of musicians start diverging: the former are expected to know as much as is needed to understand and judge a performance, while the latter undergo a demanding training that affects their entire lifestyle.