s which might well
be printed in letters of gold and hung upon the walls of educational
institutions to-day, as ("Laws," Jowett's translation, 668): "Those
who seek for the best kind of song and music, ought not to seek for
that which is pleasant, but for that which is true." In another place,
however, he speaks of music as a kind of imitation. He says that music
without words is very difficult to understand. ("Laws," _ibid._, 668.)
All these inconsistencies disappear, however, as soon as we recognize
the limitations of the music which Plato knew, upon its tonal side.
All the richness of sense incitation, and all the definiteness of
expression which come into our modern music through the magic of
"tones in key," were wholly outside the range of Plato's knowledge.

The musical notation of the Greeks consisted of letters of the
alphabet placed over the syllables to which the tones indicated were
to be sung. The letters represented absolute pitch, and as, owing to
the variety of genera, modes and chroa, the total number of tones was
very large, parts of older forms of the alphabet were also employed,
the whole number of characters thus demanded being upwards of seventy.
There was little or no classification of tones, and the entire
twenty-four letters were applied in regular order to the diatonic
series of the Dorian mode. Tones in the chromatic or enharmonic modes
were named by other letters, and the system was extremely complicated.
The notes of the instrumental accompaniment were still different from
those of the vocal part. No genuine example of this music has come
down to us in reliable form, and curiously enough, no classical writer
gives any idea of the notation of music. All that we know of this
notation we derive from Alypius, who lived about 150 A.D. Athanasius
Kircher, a Jesuit of a monastery in Sicily, published in the last
century the text of what purported to be a fragment of the first
Pythic Ode of Pindar. (See page 69.) In the original the musical
characters stood in immediate proximity to the words of the text. At
the middle of the third line begins the chorus of Citharodists. As all
the musical characters of the Greeks indicated absolute pitch, the
student will discover the difference between the vocal and
instrumental notation by comparing the notes in the early part of the
ode with those of the same pitches noted for instruments later.

Three other pieces of similar apocryphal character have come down