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An attempt to interpret the famous ancient musical composition known as ὄρθιος νόμος requires an analysis of all available evidence connecting ὄρθιος with sounds. The most extensive description of this nome (Dio 1. 1) ascribes it a military (or generally stimulating) character. This conforms with a number of passages, where an ὄρθιος sound ‘makes one stand up’ to help, or to fight, i. e. it stimulates dynamic activity. Perhaps, then, this was the initial meaning of the adjective, from which it eventually morphed to mean ‘sonorous’ or ‘piercing’. It seems that a sound could be made piercing and pervasive both by its volume and by its pitch, therefore ὄρθιος as a quality of sound frequently correlates with ‘loud’ and ‘high’. Nevertheless, a common interpretation that equates ὄρθιος with ὀξύς is unwary: the conventional metaphor in ancient Greek concerning a sound’s pitch is ὀξύς — βαρύς (‘sharp’ — ‘heavy’), whereas the spatial metaphor of vertical (‘high’ — ‘low’) is not reliably attested. Another characteristic of sound that our sources correlate with ὄρθιος is ‘strained’ (ἔντονος, ἀνάτασιν ἔχων, ἀνατεταμένος), which in its turn likely indicates loudness (but does not literally translate as either ‘high’ or ‘swift’) and physical effort on behalf of the performers, or else the ethos of a musical piece, which transmitted tension to the audience

Heraclides of Pontus (active ca 360–310 BC) is one of the sources used in Ps.-Plutarch’s De musica. In his turn, the Pontic philosopher is known to have quoted a list of ancient poets and musicians and their achievements from an epigraphical document preserved in Sicyon. Incising such a work in stone would be natural as a dedication to some divinity in a sanctuary, where it would promote the fame of the historian who composed it. The system of dating used in the Sicyonian chronicle was based on the records of Hera’s priestesses held in Argos. As far as we know, this approach was first applied by Hellanicus of Mytilene (ca 480–395 BC). If the unknown author of the chronicle borrowed his method of dating from Hellanicus, this implies that the document was created in the late fifth or early fourth century BC. Nevertheless, for Heraclides this inscription was, on the one hand, anonymous, and on the other, authoritative. Both these peculiarities lead us to assume that he believed the Sicyonian chronicle to be an archaic document. Perhaps the author forged it to pass for an ancient inscription, in order to quote from, and thus give weight to his arguments in discussions on music.

A citharodic performance typically included a προοίμιον that preceded a νόμος. Theoretically, there are three possible options: a prooimion (1) was an inseparable introduction to a specific main part; (2) was not performed independently, but could precede various main parts; (3) was an independent piece. Most evidence points to option 2. Standard circumstances of performance must have stereotyped the subject matter that appeared in the introduction, so the proem became an autonomous song that could precede any narrative part, and even be performed independently (if there were no agonistic connotations and transitional formulas). Pseudo-Plutarch’s notions of ancient citharody (De mus. 1132В–С; 1132D; 1133B–C) are interpreted as follows: a proem addressed to the gods was a citharode’s own composition (hence ὡς βούλονται, despite its formal character and epic metre). It was immediately followed by a nome, whose epic narration could be either original or taken from Homer and other poets and set to music according to one of melodic patterns systemized by Terpander. Terpander’s proems likely offered two proofs of this theory: they ended with a formula of transition to another song, which itself did not follow. Apparently, the option to use someone else’s poetry in the main body led to the practice of writing down the proems without the subsequent nomes, so that they were seen as independent works. It is likely that Pseudo-Plutarch’s source was referring to minor Homeric hymns, since they correspond perfectly with the information that we have about citharodic proems