From themistocles to philomathes: Amousos and amousia in antiquity and the early modern period
Harmon, Roger
In: International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 2003, vol. 9, no. 3, p. 351-390
Ajouter à la liste personnelle- Summary
- Greek myth and history are peppered with musician heroes, Orpheus, Amphion, and Arion being only the most prominent examples. Their antithesis was music'santi-hero, theamousos of fame marked by a deficit of culture. To be worthy of note, a person'samousia had to imply a paradox, as is the case with Zethus, Amphion's twin brother, and, above all, Themistocles, on one hand held by his contemporaries to be the "wisest of the Hellenes” (Herodotus), on the other notorious for his non-achievement in the field of music. Plutarch preserves a reference by Ion of Chios to Themistocles' abstention from playing the lyre and resulting disgrace, an episode emblematic of the mores and—seen from the polarized viewpoint of, e.g., Aristotle'sAthenaion politeia—politics of 5th-c.-BC Athens (§1). Cicero redacted the story to exemplifye negativo music's high status in Greece, and Augustine used it to legitimize disdain for classical learning (§2). Cicero's redaction figured in the protrepticlaus musices of the Early Modern Period (§3) and inspired the beginning of Thomas Morley'sIntroduction to Practicall Musicke (§4). The notions that immunity to music's charm is a sign of innate evil and that statecraft is a kind of music converged with the perennial debate on Themistocles' character in works by John Case, music's foremost Elizabethan apologist (§5), and Aelius Aristides, the second-century Greek orator (§6) respectively. Thus ancient and Early Modern authors related Themistocles'amousia to a variety of issues, emancipating it from its original context and instrumentalizing it according to their own agendas