A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

The Beginning of Lawlessness 289
"citharoedic." All these and dthers were duly distinguished,
nor were the performers allowed to confuse one
style
-'
of music with another. And the authority which The audience
determined and gave judgment,
•
and punished the dis- performance
1 1 T
^'- ^ musical
obedient, was not expressed in a hiss, nor in the most m\in quiet,
unmusical shouts of the multitude, as in our days, nor in
applause and clapping of hands. But the directors of
public instruction insisted that the spectators should
Hsten in silence to the end; and boys and their tutors, and
the multitude in general, were kept quiet by a hint from a
stick.
Such was the good order which the multitude were
willing to observe;
they would never have dared to give
judgment by noisy cries.
And then, as time went on, the poets themselves introduced
the reign of vulgar and lawless innovation. They
were men of genius, but they had no perception of what is
just and lawful in music; raging like Bacchanals and
The decline,
^j^^^^^e^ ^rom
possessed with inordinate delights—mingling lamenta- music to
tions with hymns, and paeans with dithyrambs; imitatmg
the sounds of the flute on the lyre, and making one general
confusion; ignorantly affirming that music has no truth,
and whether good or bad, can only be judged of rightly by
the pleasure of the hearer.
And by composing such licentious works, and adding to
them words as licentious, they have inspired the multitude
with lawlessness and boldness, and made them fancy that j^he JP^^j^*^ °^
they can judge for themselves about melody and song, begins in the
And in this way the theatres from being mute have become
vocal, as though they had understanding of good and
bad in music and poetry; and instead of an aristocracy, an
evil sort of theatrocracy has grown up. For if the democracy
which judged had only consisted of educated persons,
no fatal harm would have been done; but in music there