Note 101 — Chapter XXXIX · LEGES AND EPINOMIS.

Polybius, iv. pp. 20-21, about the rude Arcadians of Kynætha. He ascribes to this simple choric practice the same effect which Ovid ascribes to “ingenuæ artes,” or elegant literature generally:—

Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.

See the remarkable contention between Æschylus and Euripides in Aristophan. Ran. 876 seq., about the function and comparative excellence of poets (also Nubes, 955). Aristophanes, comparing Æschylus with Euripides, denounces music as having degenerated, and poetry as having been corrupted, at Athens. So far he agrees with Plato; but he ascribes this corruption in a great degree to the conversation of Euripides with Sokrates (Ranæ, 1487); and here Plato would not have gone along with him — at least not when Plato composed his earlier dialogues — though the ἦθος of the Treatise De Legibus is in harmony with this sentiment. Polybius cites, with some displeasure, the remark of the historian Ephorus, who asserted that musical teaching was introduced among men for purposes of cheating and mystification — ἐπ’ ἀπάτῃ καὶ γοητείᾳ παρεισκῆχθαι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, οὐδαμῶς ἁρμόζοντα λόγον αὐτῷ ῥίψας (iv. 20). Polybius considers this an unbecoming criticism.