CHAPTER V.

In the Land of Etruria.

THE GRECO-ETRUSCAN DOUBLE FLUTES.

THE BULBED OR SUBULO FLUTES.

The Song of Linus is heard to-day in the land of Egypt; the sacred melody played on the double flutes in ancient days survives without change, but no player on these pipes exists; the song is sung in wailful cadence by lips of another race, for the old race has vanished

in the long corridors of Time.

Strange is the irony of history! The dwellers in the land have forgotten the name of their song, and call it after a Greek myth. Yet, in its origin, it was a very real song of lament, a true outcome of human sorrow, age remembered and treasured in the hearts of the old Egyptian people, and perpetuated by tradition even amongst those who were strangers in the land, who tilled the soil, and lived in the ruins of the past. It was a lament for the king’s son, known as the Song of Maneros, so that grand old interviewer, Herodotus, tells us. He had thought this Song of Linus to be a famous song of Greek origin.

This is what he says:—“I have been struck with many things during my enquiries in Egypt, but with none more than this song, and I cannot conceive from whence it was borrowed, indeed they seem to have had it from time immemorial, and to have known it by the name of Maneros, for they assured me it was so called from the son of their first monarch, who being carried off by an early death, was honoured by the Egyptians with a funeral dirge, and this was the first and only song they used at that early period of their history.”

Plutarch says Maneros was the child who watched Isis as she mourned over the body of Osiris.

Herodotus is constant in admonishing the Greeks that Egypt is the mother of wisdom, and that for a vast deal of the learning and the arts they pride themselves upon they are indebted to her by direct inheritance. What he, a Greek himself, in his day told them we have found true, and in all the light of modern researches the old historian is well supported. We are accustomed to locate Egypt on a few hundred miles on the banks of the Nile, losing sight of the fact that, in the days of her dominion, her power extended far and her influence was felt in all the lands bordering the Mediterranean wherever civilization held sway. Her royal dynasties were a living force for thousands of years.

One startling record was discovered by Professor A. Sayce. He tells us that he has read the graven tablets of Tebel-Amarna (now in the Berlin Museum), which prove to be letters sent from the king or governor of Jerusalem to the Egyptian sovereign, in the century before the Exodus. This governor owed allegiance to the Egyptian monarch, and his letters were dated from “‘the city of the mountain of Urusalem, the city of the temple of the god Uras, whose name there is Marru.’ Thus long before the days when Solomon built the temple of Yahveh, the spot on which it stood had been the site of a hallowed sanctuary.”

Along the whole Asiatic coast of the Mediterranean the Egyptians had their military settlements, and consequently there ensued a mingling of many tribes and races. The Greeks, or as they came to be called, the Hellenes, were a composite people with a Pelasgic basis. There was, however, distinct Egyptian colonisation. Cecrops is said to have led a colony from Sais in Egypt and to have founded Athens in 1556 B.C., and Danaus, who seems to be a brother of Amunoph III., is also said to have left Egypt and to have founded Argos, of which he became king, and died, B.C. 1425.

The perpetual trading that was going on between the Phœnicians, Greeks, Italians and Egyptians, brought the land of Tuscia under the influence of Egyptian ideas, and of this the sepulchres of Etruria give ample evidence. The domestic life, the industrial arts, the religious rites, the paintings and sculptures, and even the mode of burial, all are exhibiting new adaptions of older faith and customs; the different development being due to differences in race, soil, and climate, to inheritance and environment. If we look back far enough we shall find that the geography of the country, the outcome of its geology, forecasts the destiny of its inhabitants and writes the history of its peoples.

Of all the variety of vases fashioned by Greeks and Etruscans, the types of the different forms we find existed long before in Egypt, and these vases have been buried in tombs—large underground chambers that are the counterparts of Egyptian tombs—and they have been placed there to please the spirits of the dead, by devoting to them the things that were most loved, most prized, during life. They used the sarcophagus, though they did not mummify or embalm the dead, but laid out the body dressed in its garments, or encased in armour of the period, with strappings of copper and bronze bosses for breastplates, placing it on a stone bier surrounded by its treasures, often of great value, and leaving it to moulder into dust by natural decay. The paintings on the walls of these dwelling rooms of the dead illustrate banquets and scenes of domestic and public life, and afford us most valuable indications of the ways and manners of long past days. A large number of these chambered tombs have been opened, with their treasures untouched since the day of burial. The first that was discovered was by the chance pushing aside and uprooting of a bush by a peasant tending his goats at evening, who, looking through the opening he had made, the setting sun throwing its light into the chamber, was seized with mortal fear at the sight his eyes fell upon; rushing home to his people he described what he saw, the body lying there dressed in the habit as it lived. The next day, however, no body was there, only the figure of it in little heaps of dust, and the metal links and the two round breast bosses fallen, indenting the dust. Those who explored the tomb and recovered its treasures were inclined to the belief that the peasant did see the human form, but that, as in similar cases that are known, it collapsed upon the admission of air and light.

The tombs were rock hewn, or built of stone and then covered with earth appearing as mere tumuli. The chambers many of them being twenty feet by twelve, and superstition asserts that in more than one instance lamps were found still burning with perpetual fire although fifteen or twenty centuries had elapsed since they were lighted.

The painting described in the last chapter, copied from one in a tomb at Corneto (meaning at the necropolis of Tarquinii, the ancient city) shows very clearly that the earliest double flutes possessed by these people were of the Egyptian kind, with a similar form of reed; and this same design I have also found on one or two vases, and also evidently the same style is meant in other instances, in which the details are not worked out, in both paintings and vases. Thus far we trace the connection between Etruria and Egypt as regards the flutes, with Greece as a continuing link.

The people of Etruria were an ancient race, occupying both sides of the Appenines, they are now believed to have been Pelasgian Tyrrhenians, they had great naval power, and in origin were related to the old Egyptian stock, or, as some say, to both Lydian and Lybian. How long they had inhabited the Tuscan land we do not know; they displaced or absorbed an earlier race, as is the custom of invaders. They spread southward as far as the Tiber centuries before Rome was, and founded a city called Tarquinii about 1040 B.C. Etrurian kings ruled at an early time in Rome, probably up to about 500 B.C. The immense cemetery of Tarquinii is all that remains of the ancient city, which is now succeeded by the Corneto city, built close to the old site.

The Etruscans it is judged came about 1200 B.C. They attained renown in bronze work and in pottery (remember here that the Lady Maket flutes date about 1100 B.C.). Historians state that Greeks from Thessaly entered Italy from the Adriatic side and introduced by their influence the higher development of art into Etruscan work. Be that as it may, there is no doubt cast upon the historical record concerning one Demaratus, a merchant of Corinth, who made great wealth by trading with this old city Tarquinii. He migrated 657 B.C. and settled there and married a lady of noble family. His two sons became famous in Roman history. He had views upon Art, and brought with him from Greece two potters and one painter and thus did good service to the land of his adoption.

Another influx of Greeks is recorded. This colony of Greeks came, however, in a peaceful fashion, and settled there, having fled from a plague or famine in their own land, in Lydia.

That the Etruscans constantly went to and fro, visiting the chief cities of Greece, is manifest, since many vases bear official inscriptions that they were prizes won at the Dionysian festivals, and at the Panathenæan games. The knowledge of these facts adds wonderfully to the interest in these vases, and enables us to understand something of the feelings which induced the burial of things that were valued personal belongings, and caused on the walls the paintings to be limned of banquets and races, and wrestling contests and musical contests, in one or more of which probably the dead man had won renown.

The musical instruments on which they excelled were the double flutes, the trumpet, and the lyre, and on these they have conferred an immortality by the ceramic art which they carried to so high a state of perfection.

I have in the matter of dates brought together a few points which I would have you look upon not as mere antiquarian lore, rather as connecting our thoughts in a survey of the progress of music, and to give an idea of the association of these three peoples, Egyptian, Etruscans, and Greeks, in its development. You should keep distinct in mind the early Etruscan period under Egyptian influence, and the much later period when Greek influence had sway from 600 B.C. to 300 B.C. It is this later period of Art that we are now entering and a very remarkable one it is.

Etruria has given us a new thing: this is the _subulo_ flute, the new Greco-Etruscan flute. It is a mystery that has not been fully solved: and, although I have my theory about it, as you will find, and have regarded these flutes very lovingly, scrutinizing every vase with a most personal affection, yet until some actual specimen is recovered from the past, I am denied that supreme satisfaction desired by the ardent investigator,—proof. Before I began many years ago to state my impressions concerning the indications given by these vases, I do not know that anyone thought the matter worth notice, or said “Here is a new invention in flutes.” The peculiar feature of the construction is the presence of _one_, _or two_, _or three bulbs_, or cocoon shaped terminations at the upper ends of the two flutes. The peculiarity in the form was generally supposed to be ornamental, and an artistic way for lightening the upper part of the pipes; or, at most, a piece of decorative conventionalism. The learned saw no purpose behind the appearances, and therefore the idea of device or constructive design was not to be entertained. The illustrations here given are copied from figures depicted on the vases in the British Museum, and you will notice no longer the straight conjunctive tip-pieces of the step-like pattern the _Arghool_ fashion of Egyptian flutes as displayed in the Corneto painting. That fashion has become old, it is out of date. Suddenly a change has come without a sign, in the home settlement in Tuscany. Centuries probably intervene, and a new influx of settlers arrives, this time of pure Greeks or Hellenes.

One of the illustrations I give is taken from a representation on a vase of a flute player at a musical contest. He wears a _phorbia_ or _capistrum_, which is a kind of leather bandage or bridle, used in precaution lest he should burst his cheeks in blowing; and the band has two holes pierced at the mouth for the insertion separately of the pipes. The fact of the use of the pipes in the band separately is beyond question, since the actual pattern of the band exists in a relic from Cyprus in the Cesnola collection at New York, and the holes in it are not large enough to admit the bulbs, but only the tip portion as shewn here. This player, as you will notice, is playing one of the new double flutes,—not an Egyptian flute.

Female players also used the phorbia in playing. Dennis notes on a vase “an _auletris_ with black hair, and a _phorbia_ over the mouth, stood by the bier playing the double pipes”—thus keeping up the Egyptian custom.

The reeds are not now taken into the mouth. Drawings of the _Arghool_ should have shown that each reed was, at the tip, tied to the pipe by a slack rambling string, for by these bits of string each reed is connected with its pipe lest it should be lost. This is shown in the Summarah drawing. Enthusiasts newly trying the _Arghool_ are very ready to drop it, since they soon feel sick from the unpleasant sensation of the reeds and the loose bits of string in the mouth, and it is an experience one remembers.

Come with me to the Vase Rooms of the British Museum and look at some of the spoils of Time. Mr. Dennis in his beautiful work on the Vases of Etruria says “the enormous quantities of the vases that have been found in Etruscan soil, within the last fifty years alone, may be reckoned not by thousands but by myriads.”

In these rooms—and there are three large rooms devoted to these specimens of fictile art—there are some hundreds of vases. Many hours I have spent amongst them, brooding over their beauty, and wondering of the tales they told of a people long passed away and a religion once the glory of the earth. On numbers of vases flute players male and female, are depicted, sometimes three or four on one vase; and the various attitudes I observed, and the indications of purpose they betokened, led me believe that there was some meaning beyond mere ornamentation in the cocoon like bulbs of the flute heads. I examined minutely vase after vase, and discovered at length out of the whole number three vases on which were delineated players handling their flutes each in a different manner, and these conveyed clearly to my mind the conviction that the bulbs were detached pieces which the player was able to arrange. Then arose the question in my mind, “for what purpose?” You have the three pictures before you. Now it is very curious that only by means of the Greco-Etruscan art work are the _subulo_ double flutes brought to our knowledge (for distinction, it may be well to give these bulbed flutes the name by which the Etruscan player was called); and yet the period during which this new invention was in vogue, comprises that in which Greece was at the height of her intellectual power. The age of Pericles and Phidias, of Plato and Euripides, of the rearing of the Parthenon and of the grand Temple of Jove at Olympia!

The dates of the vases of the best period, all are included between 440 and 330 B.C.; some earlier, also showing these flutes, date back fifty years more. Thousands of these recovered vases are distributed in museums and private collections, and have been of inestimable value for the insight they have afforded into the domestic life of the Greek people. Aristophanes in one of his comedies, written about 450 B.C., makes a bit of satire out of these flutes, causing Micas and another to say—comically complaining of their master—“Let us weep and wail like two flutes breathing some air of Olympos.” All that their poets and other writers told us of their flutes and flute-players fails to come home to our understanding until associated with these enduring pictures; and we know at least that _they_ are genuine records, and that time has allowed no hand to tamper with them. It is evident that flute music exercised a fascinating influence over these people; the player is present alike in scenes of mirth and revelry, in solemn ceremonials and in funeral procession; and yet we are so far away in thought culture and sentiment, that we are unable to imagine what that music was that it could give such delight, and be accounted one of life’s chiefest luxuries. Here, beyond question, we have the testimony of the eye that it was so; and we know that the natural laws of sounding pipes are the same to-day as yesterday, and the limits of capability of four or six holes allowed but a very narrow range for melody.

The player was called by the Etruscans “Subulone”: by the Greeks “Auletris” and the flutes known as “Auloi.” The pipes were formed of boxwood, lotus wood and sycamore.

Was it on these double flutes that Lamia played and so ’witched the world that it built a temple to her, and paid divine honours to her name? Were these the flutes spoken of as being able to play in three modes, the famed flutes, the invention of Pronomus the Theban? The date given of Pronomus is given as about 440 B.C., and is that of the period of these vases.

The sportive fauns and the lush-eyed satyrs of the woods have indeed learnt the mystery of these pipes and make merry under the vine-leaves. I have in my mind’s eye now a curly-headed satyr handling the pipes, and I wish that I knew the charm to bring before you the saucy curious look with which he is regarding them. All that modern exigencies allow me I give here, just the hands and the pipes. Notice the expectant thumb; what is it he is contemplating? What is he about to do? He intends to press the bulb of the pipe, but evidently something is wrong, and I am so anxious to know what it can be. Then there is a short line on the top of the furthest pipe; it was a puzzle to me years ago, and the satyr and I we are still puzzling over it. Each pipe has but one bulb, and I think very probably these simple creatures of nature would be unable to manage more. Four oval holes are given to each pipe, the artist has so marked them, and the firing that the vase underwent in the kiln retains them with indelible truth. When I see on wall paintings that finger holes are marked I am doubtful, because it may be the work of an overwise restorer, and so of copies of the wall-paintings on the tombs; and, indeed, I am sorry to know that modern painters and engravers are not trustworthy in details, but palm off home made suppositions about the proper finish of musical instruments, the nature of which they do not comprehend. They are ignorant even of any necessity for comprehending such simple things.

I was looking over a valuable book on sculpture yesterday, in which highly finished delineations were given of the friezes of the Parthenon; in one engraving four flute players were represented each playing a single pipe. I was dazed; wondered if my memory had played me tricks. So I went and looked at the marbles, and sure enough I was right; the sculptor had carved two hands and two pipes in the natural way of the double pipes! At that period I should not expect to see the single pipe, and I do not remember on any Etruscan vase a player on one pipe only. Neither should one expect to see the bulb form represented here because the straight form suits best the sculptor’s art; and in marble vases, also, the double pipes are quite plain as may be seen on a beautiful vase in the entrance hall of the British Museum. Read Keat’s poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and then go and look on this marble picture of

The happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new.

Or if you are denied that delight, read those five stanzas of a poem that will be immortal as the memory of our race, and will outlast the marble beauty it realizes; read it in quietness, and then, in Keat’s sweet words,

With eyes, shut softly up alive,

the scene will grow within you, as that pale singer heard it, singing

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but more endear’d, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone; Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those leaves be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal—yet do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, well-a-day! if I allow the pages of “Endymion” to allure me the hours will run by and no work be done.

The vase on which the satyr is painted, with his frisky tail, is called a _Lekythos_, and was especially dedicated to funeral ceremonies holding oil or perfume; but what the satyr has to do with such, I do not know, unless it was that the entombed owner had been a jolly old fellow himself, and liked such company.

The satyrs are frequently seen playing the double flutes, and I have noticed that in most instances men players use flutes that have not more than two bulbs, whilst the flutes that have three bulbs seem to be of more delicate make and are assigned to the female players; for they, as we know, were renowned for the highest excellence in the art.

The muse Euterpe, who presided over pastoral poetry, is represented on one vase, seated and holding the pipes in her left hand resting on her knee, whilst with her right hand she encloses the upper part of one of the pipes and is pressing the tip with her thumb. It was this design that first arrested my attention. I saw that the fingers held but two of the bulbs: there was not room in the hand for more, whilst the pipe that was free had the three bulbs: hence, at that moment, one was missing. What did it mean? There is no instance ever of a pipe of two and a pipe of three bulbs being _played_ together as a pair.

The position of the hands of Euterpe and the method of handling the flutes are shown in Fig. 17. The painting is on a vase called a _Krater_, a vase intended for mixing the water and the wine, and its fine breadth of shape is admirably fit for the display of the paintings. There is a vase close by on which this custom of mixing the wine is depicted; the usual proportions were three of water to two of wine, sometimes it was two of water to one of wine; whilst the drinking of wine without water was accounted vulgar,—a sign of coarseness of taste, and was in some Greek states prohibited by law.

The vases called Amphoræ were for containing the measure of oil given to the victor in the Panathenæan games, and are often inscribed with the date of the contest, and name of the owner, and the words “One of the prizes from Athens.” On some vases we see the player in the musical contest, standing mounted on a low stool. Eratosthenes tells us that boxing to the sound of flutes was an Etrurian custom.

On a _Hydria_ the scene depicted is a _Music Lesson_, and very life-like it is; there are two seated female figures, one has the two flutes with bulbs, and the other has a _Kithara_ or lyre, a dog plays his part in it by listening, a panther cat is sitting on a stool, and a child free as nature leaves him is playing on the floor. It is a capital picture of Greek domestic life. Another vase presents the player on two flutes in full face, and distinctly shows that the second joint of the fingers was used to cover the holes, a custom which previously I have alluded to is thus confirmed by good evidence.

Confirming the use of four holed flutes, there is, in a case in the Greek and Roman saloon, a slab representing in relief two satyrs treading grapes in a wine press, and a youth lustily blowing the double flutes to keep them to time in their movements, and most evidently the right hand flute shows four holes, clearly and roundly cut.

Another grand vase I found. This was an _Amphora_, on which was represented a female figure, Meledosa, preparing to play on the double flute; she holds them in her hand, as in Fig. 18, and as you will notice, with her forefinger of the right hand lightly pressing the top of the pipe, each pipe distinctly showing three bulbs; in this instance, the pipes are each completed ready for playing. Certainly we cannot regard the tips of the pipes as reeds; the shape does not correspond in outline to an _Arghool_ reed, and if we imagine an oboe type of reed in use at that period, this design would not correspond, for no player would press the tip of a reed of the oboe or the bassoon kind. What, then?

My idea is that this bulb form was adopted for the sake of using a concealed reed. That the bulbs were _hollow_, I am perfectly sure; because of the witness of a most precious fragment, preserved in a case in the Greek and Roman saloon, belonging to one of two pipes of a later date, found in a tomb near Athens. The Greeks called the double pipes _diaulos_, and these have been considered to be the representative of such; but they are not so, being distinct pipes used separately, as I shall have in another chapter to elucidate. Only about three quarters of a bulb remains, but one pipe still holds a broken portion. The length of that bulb, I should say, was originally in about the same proportion to the pipes as we see upon the vases; so that there is no doubt about the hollow bulb, as a real thing. Now, considered by itself the one bulb was a distinct invention in art, and as such it was complete in itself, yet after a time the invention was carried further, and the wonder is why? what end did it serve to introduce more?

The purpose of having two or three bulbs went beyond that of the original invention of the _subulo_ pattern, and was, I imagine, an ingenious device to provide that the player should be able to transpose the reed from one bulb to the other in order to play in a different mode or key, virtually without altering the disposition of the fingers; lengthening the pipe by transferring the reed higher, or shortening the effective sounding length of the pipe by placing the reed in the next lower or in the lowest bulb of the three: thus the player would have the choice of three modes or keys, whilst his pipes would remain outwardly the same. The bulb forms an artificial mouth, as was the custom many centuries later in the _cap_ of the _cromorne_. The position of the reed determines the effective length of the pipe; the difference of pitch would be in each case one tone, as I find that the length of bulb corresponds with the distance between two finger holes of the pipe. Does this solve the mystery? Be that as it may, I have found in these vases a source of ever renewed pleasure.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Tombs, tombs of a dozen buried cities, once gay with life, full of the daily sympathy of pleasure, and no less of sorrow. They gave the dead their gold and silver and jewels; they gave them food, fruits, oil and wine, and left them to silence and slow time. These lovely _Amphoræ_ buried, these festal _Kraters_ empty,—and once brimmed with wine! We think, irresistibly drawn to think of them, with Keats’s longing wish:—

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been Cool’d a long age in the deep delvèd earth.

The chamber had been rifled a thousand years or more; gold and ornaments gone, only the dust and the skeletons of men and women, young men and maidens,—the most perishable of things, the vases the most enduring. The owners bought their burial land “in perpetuity;” and, like the old Egyptians, they builded for a very brief and rudely broken eternity.