Sam Topalidis (2025)
Introduction
Music is like birds in flight, it is not constrained by borders. It is like the air we breathe, it is not owned by any nation.
Ancient Greeks considered music to be an essential element of intellectual, artistic and social activity as well as of everyday life. They believed that it forms man's character and thus it is an ideal medium for bringing up the young (Hadziaslani 2012).
Portrayals of musicians and musical instruments in ancient Cycladic (in Aegean Sea), Minoan, Mycenaean and Cypriot art of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC show that these societies employed music in public ritual and private entertainment (Lingas 2010b:484).
Indeed, music in the ancient Greek world also covered dance, lyrics and the performance of poetry. A wide range of musical instruments were played at ceremonies, festivals, private drinking parties (symposia), weddings, funerals and during athletic and military activities (Cartwright 2013). (Note 1.)
Ancient Greek music was dominated by the lyre (Plate 1) and aulos (double pipe, Plate 2, see Yannis Pantazis at: www.youtube.com/watch). Other instruments included the bagpipe, panpipes, rattle (seistron, borrowed from Egypt), cymbals, conch and triton shells, trumpet, horn, tambourine, shallow drum (tympanon) and clappers (Lingas 2010a).
This document is a summary of the most important musical instruments played in ancient Greece. The following is a description of the three types of ancient Greek musical instruments—string, wind and percussion.
String instruments
In ancient Greece, string instruments were played either with the fingers and/or with a plectrum (of hard wood, ivory, metal or horn) held in the hand. String instruments first appear in ancient Greek vase illustrations around 700 BC. The string instruments are usually divided into three categories: lyres, harps and lutes. These instruments were in use in Mesopotamia before 2000 BC and became known to Western Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 2nd millennium BC. Greek lyres had the same string length, whereas harps had strings of different length (Tsentemeidou 2020:24–25).
Plate 1: Painting of a seven string lyre with tortoise shell, 480–470 BC (Petsas 1981:91)
Plate 2: Painting on a Sarcophagus showing aulos (double pipe), Hagia Triada Crete, 1370–1300 BC (Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete, author’s photo 2024)
Lyres
The lyre appears for the first time in Palestine in c.3100 BC. It was known to the Sumerians, Hittites, Egyptians and Babylonians and was rectangular and asymmetrical with strings of unequal length. In ancient Greece, however, the Minoan and Mycenaean lyres were symmetrical and round. The lyres of the Greek world had strings of different thickness and tension which were made of hemp, linen or sinew (Plate 1) (Tsentemeidou 2020:25–26).[ The author has witnessed gifted musician Yannis Pantazis, play his replica Greek lyre at Santorini, see: www.youtube.com/watch ]
In its earliest form, the lyre consisted of a soundbox (with a palpitating membrane from the skin of an ox or goat kid stretched over the open side of a concave tortoise shell), two arms (made of goat horns or two similar curved wooden rods) and a crossbar (a cylindrical piece of wood connected across the arms). Strings of equal length (from three to 12) were secured to the brace (tailpiece), passed over a bridge and tightened on the crossbar (Kotsanas 2009:18).
During the 6th and 5th centuries BC in Athens, boys aged between 13 and 16 years were taught to play the lyre and kithara (see later) and to sing. Music taught discipline and order. Sporting activities were also performed accompanied to music, particularly for synchronisation. Music was a staple element of the symposium (drinking parties). After eating, the men sang with an aulos or lyre providing backing music. Women too could enjoy music in their homes. Usually women played stringed instruments and recited poetry (Cartwright 2013). Girls in ancient Athens were not entitled to education as part of the organised educational system, but somehow they learned to dance, sing and play a musical instrument. Eminent professional musicians received a very high salary (Tsentemeidou 2020).
Kithara
The kithara comprised a wooden soundboard and a box-shaped body, or resonator, from which extended two hollow arms connected by a crossbar (Plate 3). It had originally three, but later as many as 12 strings which ran from the crossbar to the lower end of the instrument, passing over a bridge on the soundboard. The strings were usually played with a plectrum, the left-hand fingers damping unwanted strings and at times apparently stopping the strings or producing harmonics. In solos, the fingers of both hands sometimes plucked the strings. The kithara was held upright or inclined toward the player, its weight often supported by an over-the-shoulder or wrist-to-yoke armband (www.britannica.com/art/kithara).
By the end of the 7th century BC, the kithara found a major niche in Greek public performances. With its large soundbox it was more suited for virtuoso display (factsanddetails.com).
Plate 3: Kithara, (factsanddetails.com)
Harps
The 2800–2700 BC marble figure of a seated man playing a harp is among the earliest of the few known Cycladic representations of musicians (Plate 4, www.metmuseum.org/essays/music-in-ancient-greece). Harps started being considered as standard string instruments in Greece at the end of the 7th century BC (Plate 5). They were played on the lap by plucking the strings with the fingers. They were treated as foreign instruments (Tsentemeidou 2020:30).
Since the 5th century BC, two types of harps are visible on Greek pottery. The first type had a flat base which was placed on the musician's thigh. There was a bent and vertical arm in which the strings were connected to the base in a bent or vertical way with 16 to 22 strings. By the end of the 4th century BC, an ornamental and carved type was depicted on pottery. In this type of harp, there is a support at the end of the bent arm and a soundbox made in the shape of a bird. This harp, which is similar to Persian angular harps, was used in Greece as a result of cultural exchanges. This harp had three sides and appeared in the form of a right-angle triangle. There was a sloping side and shorter strings were further away from the player. This instrument was also placed on the musician's thigh and called trigon (triangle). In the 5th century BC, most of the depicted harp players were female (Ainaz 2022:3458).
Plate 4: Harp player, c.2750 BC, Cyclades (www.metmuseum.org)
Plate 5: Harp player on an Attic amphora c.440 BC (British Museum, London)
Lutes (pandoura)
The pandoura was a wooden three-stringed instrument with a small soundbox and a long neck with frets (Plate 6). It was held and played horizontally (Kotsanas 2009). Lutes appeared in Cyprus as early as c.1400–1200 BC. Lutes were extremely rare in Greece and some were standardised during the 4th century BC. It was probably the only necked instrument that ancient Greeks played (Tsentemeidou 2020).
Plate 6: Pandoura, c.400–350 BC (National Archaeological Museum, Athens)
Wind instruments
Aulos
The oldest surviving musical instruments in Greece are bone auloi from 7th–4th millennium BC (www.britannica.com/art/lute). Figures are frequently depicted playing two pipes with finger-holes (Plates 2, 7) with one or a double reed. When a player appears with two pipes, we also use the plural form auloi (Note 2). There was also a single-piped wind instrument. Aulos was connected to the celebrations of Dionysus (also known as Bacchus) and it was present in ceremonies, in symposia, in music contests, in the theatrical drama performances and in entertainment. The instrument was not a Greek invention. The earliest European iconographic example of double pipes is a marble statue from the Cycladic islands which dates back to the 3rd millennium BC (Tsentemeidou 2020:34–35).
Some players wore a leather strap around their head to support both their cheeks and their instruments (Lingas 2010a).
Plate 7: Girl playing aulos on a Greek flask c.480 BC (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
Panpipe
The panpipe was played by shepherds and had no place in popular music. There were two types, single-caned and many-caned. The latter was a set of seven tubes without holes, joined together and the earliest ones are from around 400 BC. They were made of cane, wood, clay, bronze or a type of resin (Tsentemeidou 2020:36).
The panpipe consists of a set of interconnected pipes with varying lengths enables them to produce different notes (Plate 8). The reeds are blocked at their base and the player blows across the open end to produce sound (www.symposionsantorini.com).
Plate 8: Pan pipe, by Yannis Pantazis (www.symposionsantorini.com
Trumpet
There were also instruments such as the trumpet (Plate 9) [mentioned in Xenophon’s Anabasis in 400 BC][ Words within square brackets ‘[ ]’ within a reference are the author’s words. ] and the horn (Tsentemeidou 2020). Music played an important role in ancient Greek armies helping to provide rhythm for the march and to lift spirits. In the Spartan army, the trumpet sounded the morning of battle. In the heat of battle signals were given by the piercing sound of trumpets (Gomez 2019:332).
Due to its exceptional sonority, it was usually used for giving signals to a large crowd or to inform distant listeners (up to 10 km). It was particularly suitable for giving the starting signals in athletic competitions, and to coordinate teamwork. More seldom, they were used for ritual and musical purposes. The Greek trumpet, known since the years of Homer, consisted of a long, straight tube (roughly 90 cm) of narrow, cylindrical bore that ended in a prominent tulip-shaped bell. It was usually made of copper with a bone or metal mouthpiece. The sound was produced with a direct blow into the mouthpiece (Kotsanas 2009:50).
Plate 9: Reconstructed ancient Greek trumpets (Kotsanas 2009:51)
Bagpipe
The bagpipe probably existed in ancient Greece. Two obscure passages in Aristophanes’ plays infer its existence. In the play Lysistrata (411 BC), there is reference to ‘taking a bladder’ to make the music for a Spartan dance and more specifically in the play, The Acharnians (425 BC), ‘you pipers who are here from Thebes, with bone pipes blow the posterior of a dog’, followed by jibes at their droning sound (Bates 1995:58, 60).
An iconographic depiction of a bagpipe from ancient Greece and Rome is an engraved hyacinth gemstone (Plate 10) which depicts what ‘appears’ to be a bagpipe hanging from a tree. The gem belongs to the private Ionides Collection and is 1.9 cm thick and about 2.5 cm by 1.7 cm (Calvo-Sotelo 2015:38–39). Its conventional dating is [apparently] the 1st century BC. In the depiction, there are three pipes—suggesting a blow-pipe, chanter and drone, or blowpipe and two chanters (Evankovich 2025:54–55). The gem is either nowhere this old, or it does not represent a bagpipe with drones because a bagpipe at this time is unlikely to have had drone pipes.
Plate 10: Engraved gem with a bagpipe, [allegedly] 1st century BC (Calvo-Sotelo 2015:39)
Hydraulis
The hydraulis was invented by Ctesibius of Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. It was the first keyboard instrument and consisted of 24 keys and was the forerunner of the contemporary church organ (Plate 11) (Kotsanas 2009:6). The hydraulis was a hydrostatic organ. Sometime around the 2nd century AD, its mechanically complex piston was replaced by bellows, which could be used with or without a cistern (Lingas 2010a:386).
The hydraulis employed falling water to produce a constant flow of air that was directed through different size tubes. Organs with piston pumps and wooden sliders made sound in pipes. During the Hellenistic and Roman period, the hydraulis, was known in regions of Western Europe but it was forgotten after that. In the 8th or early 9th century this Byzantine organ became an important part of imperial ceremonies (Maliaras 2013:542).
Plate 11: Reconstructed hydraulis – rear view (Kotsanas 2009:9)
Percussion instruments
The most common percussion instruments in ancient Greece were the tympanon (drum), the seistron (rattle), the krotalon (clapper) and the cymbal (Tsentemeidou 2020:36). In addition, bells were used to keep rhythm during ceremonies and at dance lessons (factsanddetails.com).
Tympanon (drum)
The drum was played mainly by women on spiritual and festive occasions and often accompanied Greek dance in public processions. From around the 7th century BC, the Great Mother’s rituals and mysteries were interlaced with the rites of Dionysus, the god of wine. The ancient Greek drum consisted of a round wooden frame wide enough to sit comfortably in the palm of the player’s hand and produces sound through impact. One side of this frame was covered with ox hide (Plate 12). Many tympana had several equally spaced ringlets installed around the inner side of their frames to underline their rumble with some metallic rustles when shaken. The number of ringlets could be between four and seven. The tympanon could be made in different sizes (Choubineh (2021). The bronze drum from the Ideon Andron cave in Crete, c.750 BC, stands out due to its elaborate representations (Plate 13) (Mavraidis 2024).
Other ‘musicians’ included the trieraules drummer who set the beat for the rowers in Greek triremes (Cartwright 2013).
Plate 12: Reconstructed ancient Greek drums (Mavraidis 2024:57)
Plate 13: Bronze drum, Crete, mid-8th century BC (Archaeological Museum Heraklion, Crete)
Clappers (krotala)
The clappers were held in pairs and rhythmically squeezed with the fingers to make a sound keeping the tempo and the rhythm in choruses, weddings and festivals. They consisted of two concave pieces of shell, wood, cane or metal loosely connected at their end with leather strips allowing an opening of up to 90 degrees (Plate 14) (Kotsanas 2009:56).
Plate 14: Woman with krotala, 5th century BC (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Cymbals
This percussion instrument was known since Minoan times which were held and struck rhythmically with the hands. They consisted of two concave hemispherical discs (5–18 cm in diameter) of cast bronze (Plate 15) (Kotsanas 2009).
Plate 15: Reconstructed ancient Greek cymbals (Kotsanas 2009:57)
Rattle (seistron)
The rattle was made of wood, metal, clay (Plate 16) or a combination of these material which, when shaken, accompanied the rhythm in religious processions. It usually consisted of a handle and U-shaped frame that had either moving parallel rods (striking in its walls), or constant rods with moving perforated noise-making objects. The player held it in a vertical position and shook it rhythmically (Kotsanas 2009:58).
Plate 16: Reconstructed ancient Greek seistrons (Kotsanas 2009:59)
What did ancient Greek music sound like?
Sounds not heard for 2,000 years can [allegedly] be experienced thanks to reconstructing the melodies, instruments and rhythms. Replicas of ancient Greek instruments have been created and have been used in performing scored texts of ancient works surviving on papyrus and stone. The earliest music that may be speculatively recreated is that of Homer, who composed his epics around 700 BC to the accompaniment of a lyre. The sound of epic song has been recreated using the four notes that would have been available to Homer and improvised on the basis of the pitch inflections of ancient Greek. In other cases, fragments of the melody and rhythms have survived to give a more complete sense of the original piece. The most valuable of these is a papyrus fragment with the music from Euripides’ play, Orestes (408 BC). Another source, a stone tablet from Delphi, Greece shows the melodic notation of Athenaeus’ Paean from 127 BC. Professor of Classics at Oxford University, Armand D’Angour has worked to fill in the gaps and the performance of these pieces at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hOK7bU0S1Y&t=35s which provides an insight into what ancient Greeks may have heard (www.humanities.ox.ac.uk/article/what-does-ancient-greek-music-sound-like).
A Final note
Traditional Greek music, song and dance has always played an important role in the life of a Greek. It creates a sense of overall well-being of a community. Unfortunately, very few specimens of musical instruments from ancient Greece even partially intact have survived which forces scholars to rely heavily on literature and art (Lingas 2010).
Notes
Note 1
Music Theory
Music also became an element of philosophical study, notably, by the followers of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (c.570–c.490 BC), who believed that music was a mathematical expression of the cosmic order (Cartwright 2013). The Pythagoreans showed how numbers could be used to describe the harmonies of music. They found that the most pleasant sounds occurred in exact proportions and discovered that the length of a musical string was is in an exact numerical relation to the pitch of its tone. Aristotle opposed the Pythagorean notion of celestial harmony (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hist-westphilmusic-to-1800/).
Note 2
Musician Yannis Pantazis on the Greek Island of Santorini plays his self-made replica auloi (which he has recorded on CD: www.symposionsantorini.com/product-page/aylos-aulos-cd) which is very soothing to the ear, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNCjKzXanfE.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Michael Bennett and Russell McCaskie for their comments to an earlier draft.
References
1. The author has witnessed gifted musician Yannis Pantazis, play his replica Greek lyre at Santorini, see: www.youtube.com/watch
2. Words within square brackets ‘[ ]’ within a reference are the author’s words.
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