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MUSIC AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE ROMAN
EMPIRE
Is music just matter of hearing and producing notes? And is it of

interest just to musicians? By exploring different authors and
philosophical trends of the Roman Empire, from Philo of Alexandria
to Alexander of Aphrodisias, from the rebirth of Platonism with
Plutarch to the last Neoplatonists, this book sheds light on different
ways in which music and musical notions were made a crucial part of
philosophical discourse. Far from being mere metaphors, notions
such as harmony, concord and attunement became key philosophical
tools in order to better grasp and conceptualise fundamental notions
in philosophical debates from cosmology to ethics and from
epistemology to theology. The volume is written by a distinguished
international team of contributors.
francesco pelosi is Lecturer of History of Ancient Philosophy at the

University of Pisa. His main field of study concerns the interaction
between music and philosophy in ancient Greece, with a special
focus on the mind-body relationship and theories of perception. He
is the author of Plato on Music, Soul and Body (Cambridge, 2010).
federico m. petrucci is Professor of History of Ancient Philosophy at

the University of Turin. His main research areas are Plato and the
Platonist Tradition and his publications include the first English
translation of the texts of the Platonist Taurus of Beirut (2018).
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MUSIC AND PHILOSOPHY
IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
edited by
FRANCESCO PELOSI
University of Pisa
FEDERICO M. PETRUCCI
University of Turin
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University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One

Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown
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www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108832274
doi: 10.1017/9781108935753
© Cambridge University Press 2021
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to

the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no
reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2021
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British

Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Pelosi,
Francesco, editor. | Petrucci, Federico M., 1985– editor.
title: Music and philosophy in the Roman Empire / edited by

Francesco Pelosi, Federico M.
Petrucci.
description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2020. | Includes

bibliographical references and index.
identifiers: lccn 2020039512 (print) | lccn 2020039513 (ebook) |

isbn 9781108832274
(hardback) | isbn 9781108935753 (ebook)
subjects: lcsh: Music – To 500 – Philosophy and aesthetics. | Music

and philosophy –
History – To 500. | Philosophy, Ancient.
classification: lcc ml169 .m9 2020 (print) | lcc ml169 (ebook) | ddc
781.1/70937–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039512
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039513
isbn 978-1-108-83227-4 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence

or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites
referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any
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EMPIRE


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IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
edited by
FRANCESCO PELOSI
University of Pisa
University of Turin
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www.cambridge.org
doi: 10.1017/9781108935753


Library.


Petrucci.


isbn 9781108832274

and philosophy –

781.1/70937–dc23
isbn 978-1-108-83227-4 Hardback

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EMPIRE



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IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
edited by
FRANCESCO PELOSI
University of Pisa
University of Turin
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www.cambridge.org
doi: 10.1017/9781108935753


Library.

Petrucci.


isbn 9781108832274

and philosophy –
781.1/70937–dc23
isbn 978-1-108-83227-4 Hardback

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Contents
Notes on Contributors
page vii
Acknowledgements
xi
List of Abbreviations
xii
Introduction
1
Francesco Pelosi and Federico M. Petrucci
1 The Scala Naturae and Music: Two Models in Philo’s Thought 21
Carlos Lévy
2 Music and Plutarch’s Platonic Cosmos
38
Bram Demulder
3 The Harmoniser God: Harmony as a Cosmological
Model in Middle Platonist Theology
60
Federico M. Petrucci
4 Alexander of Aphrodisias and Musical Models for Ontological

Enquiries
85
Laura M. Castelli
5 How to Resist Musical Dogmatism: The Aim and Methods of

Pyrrhonian Inquiry in Sextus Empiricus’ Against the Musicologists
(Math. 6)
108
Máté Veres
6 Shifting Epistemological Perspectives in Ptolemy’s Harmonics: From

the Science of Sound to the Study of Music
131
Andrew Barker
7 Musical Imagery in Clement of Alexandria and Origen: The Greek

Musical World Revised and Accepted
153
Francesco Pelosi
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vi
Contents
8 Plotinus on Music, Rhythm, and Harmony
178
Alexandra Michalewski
9 Porphyry’s Commentary on Ptolemy’s Harmonics: Questions of

Philosophic and Scientific Identity
198
Harold Tarrant
10 The Music of the Virtues in Late Ancient Platonism 227
Dominic J. O’Meara
11 Harmonics as Theological Paradigm in Proclus
242
Stephen Gersh
12 Calcidius on Cosmic Harmony
262
Christina Hoenig
13 Harmonia in Philoponus’ Commentary on Nicomachus’

Introduction to Arithmetic
286
Giovanna R. Giardina
Bibliography
303
Index Locorum
327
General Index
346
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andrew barker is Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of

Birmingham. He is the author of eight books on ancient Greek music
and musical theory, including Greek Musical Writings (2 volumes,
Cambridge 1984–1989), Ancient Greek Writers on their Musical Past
(Pisa and Rome 2014), and most recently Porphyry’s Commentary on
Ptolemy’s Harmonics: a Greek Text and Annotated Translation
(Cambridge 2017). He has also published over a hundred articles on
topics in these and related areas.
laura m. castelli is research and teaching Fellow at the Munich

School of Ancient Philosophy (MUSAPh), LMU, Munich. She is the
author of several publications on ancient metaphysics and logic,
among which are Aristotle, Metaphysics Iota. Introduction,
Translation and Notes (Clarendon, Oxford 2018); Alexander of
Aphrodisias, On Aristotle.
Topics II (Bloomsbury 2020); Alexander of Aphrodisias, On Aristotle.
Topics III (Bloomsbury, forthcoming).
bram demulder is currently substitute lecturer at KU Leuven and

postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liège / F.R.S.-FNRS
(Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique). His main research interest is

the interplay between cosmology and ethics in the Platonist
tradition. In his PhD thesis (KU Leuven 2018) he explored this theme
in the work of Plutarch of Chaeronea.
stephen gersh, Emeritus Professor of Medieval Philosophy, University
of Notre Dame. Author of numerous books on the ancient, medieval,
and early modern Platonic traditions, among which are Middle
Platonism and Neoplatonism. The Latin Tradition (Notre Dame 1986)
and Concord in Discourse. Harmonics and Semiotics in Late Medieval
and Early Modern Platonism (Berlin and New York 1998).
vii
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viii
giovanna r. giardina is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the
University of Catania. Her studies focus in particular on the
Aristotelian philosophy and on Neoplatonism. Among her recent
studies are Fisica del movimento e teoria dell’infinito. Analisi critica
di Aristotele, Phys. III (Sankt Augustin 2012); ‘Providence in John
Philoponus’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics’, CHORA 13 (2015),
149–72; ‘Jean Philopon Commentateur d’Aristote, Physique II 8’,
Revue de Philosophie Ancienne 32 (2014), 177–221; ‘Aristotle vs.
Empedocles in Physics II.8’, in Proceedings of the World Congress

Aristotle 2400 years, ed. D. Sfendoni-Mentzou (Thessaloniki 2019),
78–82; ‘Platone, Eutidemo 294e2–3’, Museum Helveticum 75/2
(2018), 129–37; To Metron. Sur la notion de Mesure dans la
Philosophie d’Aristote, ed. by G. R. Giardina (Paris-Brussels 2020).
christina hoenig is Associate Professor in Classics at the University of

Pittsburgh. Her main areas of research are the Greek and Roman
Platonic traditions. She mostly works on topics in natural philosophy
and theology, and a central theme of interest is the translation of
Greek philosophical vocabulary into Latin. Representative
publications include ‘Calcidius and the Creation of the Universe’,
Rhizomata 2/1
(2014); further, ‘Calcidius’, in Tarrant, H., Baltzly, D. et al. (eds.), A

Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity (2018). Her
monograph Plato’s Timaeus and the Latin Tradition was published in
The Cambridge Classical Series with Cambridge University Press
(2018).
carlos le´vy is Emeritus Professor of Roman Philosophy and

Literature at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). His main
research interests are Philo of Alexandria, Hellenistic philosophy, and
Cicero.
Among his publications are Cicero Academicus. Recherches sur les

Académiques et sur la philosophie cicéronienne (Rome 1992); Philon
d’Alexandrie et le langage de la philosophie (Turnhout 1998); and
the article Philo of Alexandria in the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
alexandra michalewski is Research Fellow at the CNRS (Centre Léon

Robin, Paris-Sorbonne). Her work focuses on Plotinus and the
ancient Platonic tradition. One of her main research interests is the
interplay between Aristotelianism and Platonism from the beginnings
of the Imperial era to Late Antiquity. She is the author of a
monograph on intelligible Forms as causes from Antiochus to
Plotinus: La puissance de l’intelligible. La théorie plotinienne des
Formes au miroir de l’héritage médioplatonicien (Leuven 2014).
Recently she has published, 1 5 6
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ix
as co-editor with M.-A. Gavray, Les principes cosmologiques du

platonisme. Origines, Influences et systématisation (Turnhout 2017).
dominic j. o’meara is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the

University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He has published widely on
Plato and the history of Platonism in Antiquity and Byzantium. His
books include Pythagoras Revived. Mathematics and Philosophy in
Late Antiquity (Oxford 1989); Plotinus (Oxford 1993); Platonopolis.
Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Oxford 2003);
Cosmology and Politics in Plato’s Later Writings (Cambridge 2017).
francesco pelosi is Lecturer of Ancient Philosophy at the University of

Pisa. His main field of study concerns the interaction between music
and philosophy in ancient Greece, with a special focus on the mind–
body relationship and theories of perception. In recent years he has

been the principal investigator of a project devoted to the collection,
translation, and analysis of the ancient Greek sources on the
interplay between music and philosophy, from the Presocratics to
late Antiquity (Megiste mousike, 2 vols., forthcoming De Gruyter). He
is the author of Plato on Music, Soul and Body (Cambridge University
Press 2010).

the University of Turin. He studied and obtained his PhD in Pisa. He
was fellow of the Humboldt Foundation in Würzburg, of the Scuola
Normale Superiore, and of the Durham University. He is particularly
interested in Plato and the Platonist tradition. His publications
include a translation and commentary of Theon’s Expositio (Sankt
Augustin 2012) and the monograph Taurus of Beirut. The Other Side
of Middle Platonism (London and New York 2018).
harold tarrant studied at Cambridge and Durham UK, and taught

Classics for thirty-eight years in Australian universities. After retiring
to live in the UK from 2012 he remains Professor Emeritus at the
University of Newcastle Australia. Recent publications include
Proclus: Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, vol. 6 (Cambridge 2017);
François Renaud and Harold Tarrant, The Platonic Alcibiades I: The
Dialogue and Its Ancient Reception (Cambridge 2015); and (edited
with D. A. Layne, D. Baltzly, and F. Renaud) Brill’s Companion to the
Reception of Plato in Antiquity (Leiden 2018).
ma´te´ veres is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Collaborative Program

in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He
was 1 5 6
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a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Hamburg, at the
University of Geneva, and at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He
works mainly on Hellenistic philosophy, with a focus on epistemology
and ethics. He received his PhD from the Central European
University in November 2016, and was a postdoctoral researcher at
the University of Hamburg and at the University of Geneva. His
recent publications include ‘Sextus Empiricus on Religious
Dogmatism’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 58 (2020); ‘Keep
Calm and Carry On: Sextus Empiricus on the Origins of Pyrrhonism’,
History of Philosophy and Logical Analysis 23 (2020); ‘Theology,
Innatism, and the Epicurean Self’, Ancient Philosophy 37 (2017).
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Acknowledgements
This volume has its roots in the International Conference ‘The
Harmony of Reason. Music and Philosophy from the Early Imperial
Age to Late Antiquity’, held at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa) in
September 2016, in the framework of the three-year Research
Project ‘I filosofi e la musica’
(‘Futuro in Ricerca 2013’ programme), supported by the Italian

Ministry of Education, Universities and Research. We would like to
thank all the participants in the Conference and the Scuola Normale
Superiore for its generous support to the event. Some of the papers
given at that conference were selected as the core of the present
volume, while others were added upon invitation. As editors, we
wanted different areas of international scholarship to be
represented, and we especially sought to combine papers by
younger researchers with ones by more experienced scholars. For
his qualified proofreading of the chapters of non-native English
authors, we would like to warmly thank Sergio Knipe.
xi
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Abbreviations
LCL: Loeb Classical Library
SVF: von Arnim, H. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. Indexes by M.

Adler, 4 vols. Stuttgart, Teubner, 1903–1924
***
As a rule, references to ancient authors and works follow the Oxford

Classical Dictionary.
***
As a rule, we transliterate Greek words and short phrases (not

sentences) in the main text; all Greek words and sentences in the
main text – either transliterated or not – are accompanied by a
translation.
xii
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Introduction
Francesco Pelosi and Federico M. Petrucci
In the last forty years, two fields of research have progressively

emerged with an initially pioneering and then central role in the
scholarly debate on Antiquity: ancient music on the one hand, and
post-Hellenistic and late antique philosophy on the other. This
volume is the first attempt to discover the huge links between these
two fundamental areas in the study of the ancient world by drawing
a thorough and complex picture of the various ways in which musical
notions entered the philosophical debate during the first centuries of
the Christian era and contributed to shaping its content.
After decades of non-systematic enquiries, in the Eighties two

ground-breaking volumes on ancient Greek music brought to
classicists’ attention an extraordinary collection of literary and
philosophical texts concerning music, from Homer to Late Antiquity
(Barker 1984, 1989). Andrew Barker’s seminal works made many
technical, and somewhat obscure, issues related to ancient musical
culture completely accessible to non-specialists and initiated a
process that in a couple of decades was to lead to the stable
inclusion of ancient music among the branches of classical studies.
Following Barker’s inspiration, many scholars have embarked on in-
depth enquiries into music in Antiquity, by unveiling the religious,
political, and social values embedded in musical experience, the
theoretical background of harmonic theories, and the historical
development of musical culture.1 As a result, topics such as contexts
and practices associated with musical performances, the educational
and social role of music, and its scientific study have become
common in Classical scholarship nowadays.
1 Two fundamental technical and historical surveys are West 1992

and Hagel 2009. On harmonics, the reference work is Barker 2007.
The essays collected in Murray and Wilson 2004 provide a wide-
ranging enquiry into the social, political, and religious role of music
in Classical Athens. On the interesting yet undeveloped branch of
ancient Greek musical historiography, see Barker 2014.
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francesco pelosi and federico m. petrucci
Recent decades have also witnessed the flourishing of studies on

Imperial and late antique philosophy as a momentous phase in the
history of the ancient thought. Also in this case, crucial aspects of
post-Hellenistic and late antique thought have emerged in an
intriguing development of the field of enquiry, from the critical
engagement with the major philosophical traditions of the Classical
and Hellenistic periods to some cultural exchanges of paramount
importance (above all the encounter of ancient Greek philosophy
with Judaism and Christianity), and from exegetical strategies to the
focus on specifically philosophical issues. As a consequence, the
actual intellectual import of these centuries for the history of
philosophy has come to the forefront.2
Despite these impressive advances in our knowledge both of ancient

music and of post-Hellenistic and late antique philosophy, the
intersection between these two fields still remains unexplored to a
large extent. Before delving into the reasons why it deserves special
consideration, let us add a few remarks on how the study of the
interplay between music and philosophy can generally contribute to
our knowledge of Antiquity. The main contributions can be illustrated
by considering three points – the first two are preliminary and
related to our appreciation of the sources, the third is more strictly
related to the goal of this book. First, our knowledge of ancient
Greek music relies heavily on philosophical texts: ancient
philosophers discuss at length many issues concerning both the
theory and practice of music, and this rich amount of evidence is
one of the principal sources for the reconstruction of musical culture
throughout Antiquity.
A rather clear picture of this phenomenon emerges as soon as one
skims through fundamental books in the field, for instance Andrew
Barker’s above-mentioned collection (especially vol. 2, 1989) or
David Creese’s The Monochord in Ancient Greek Harmonic Science
(2011). Both authors extensively draw upon philosophical texts,
whose contribution to our understanding of ancient Greek music and
its scientific study is crucial not only quantitatively, but also
qualitatively: philosophical accounts such as those by Archytas,
Philolaus, Plato, Aristotle, and Porphyry provide 2 After the classic
monographs by Baltes 1976, Dillon 1977, and Donini 1982, interest
in post-Hellenistic philosophy has been considerably increasing,
especially with respect to the Peripatetic and the Platonist traditions.
As to the former, the study of Alexander has advanced considerably,
and we have at our disposal a fundamental sourcebook on
Peripatetic philosophy (Sharples 2010).
Research on post-Hellenistic and late antique Platonism is even

better developed: along with reference books such as Gerson 2010,
Tarrant et al. 2018, and Boys-Stones 2018, and the ongoing project
Der Platonismus in der Antike, several works have shed light on the
philosophy and exegetical methods of post-Hellenistic and late
antique Platonism (see Bonazzi 2003 and 2015, Ferrari 1995 and
2001, Gersh 1986, Hoenig 2018, Michalewski 2014, Opsomer 1998,
O’Meara 2003, Petrucci 2018a).
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Introduction
a clear image of the development of the reflection on music and

harmonics from both a technical and a methodological point of view.
This picture indicates how pressing a properly philosophical analysis
of these musical passages is: even if one focuses only on the
philosophers’ contributions to musical theory, it is of paramount
importance to have adequate knowledge of their philosophical use of
music – and this is a crucial contribution of this book. Second, and
very interestingly, it is not simply the case that philosophers develop
discussions on music and harmonics: what has also emerged is that
music theorists fully exploit philosophical notions and adopt specific
philosophical approaches which lie at the basis of their technical
works on music. This is the case with Aristoxenus, Ptolemy, and
Aristides Quintilianus, just to mention three prominent figures,
whose intellectual enterprises in musical fields presuppose specific
philosophical theories. Indeed, the philosophical background of
these music theorists strongly influences the way in which they
contribute to shaping the technical domain of music and harmonics
and to interpreting its study: this clearly emerges, for instance, when
one focuses on Aristoxenus’ conception of harmonics as an
‘Aristotelian’ science, or once Ptolemy’s methodological revolution is
investigated by considering not only its final technical outcome but
also, and above all, its philosophical assumptions and aims.3 This
leads us to the third point (the most important one for our
purposes): in Antiquity music is not a topic occasionally dealt with by
philosophers but rather a philosophical topic, inasmuch as it plays a
role in argumentative and exegetical strategies. As a matter of fact,
although it would be difficult to argue that all ancient philosophers
regard music as a fundamental topic, it is quite fair to say that there
has not been a moment in the history of ancient philosophy when
leading figures have not reflected on a number of aspects of
harmonics and music, and have not exploited musical notions for
philosophical purposes. This is blatantly true for the Pythagoreans,
Plato, Aristotle and the Early Peripatetics, the Stoics and the
Epicureans (especially, but not only, Philodemus), and – as recent
scholarship has shown – for a Platonist such as Porphyry, if we wish
to leap directly from the late Hellenistic age to the third century AD.
Taking into account how and why ancient philosophers deal with
music has suggested innovative ways of approaching much-debated
questions concerning some major philosophical figures and
movements (e.g. Pythagoreanism and Plato’s philosophy, especially
his ethics and psychology) and has led to the project of a
comprehensive survey of the interplay between music and 3 On
Aristoxenus, see Bélis 1986 and Barker 2007, 136–259; on Ptolemy,
see especially Barker 2000a.
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philosophy in Antiquity.4 However, even though a systematic interest

in musical topics has become increasingly common among scholars
of ancient philosophy, there is still much work to be done. This is
particularly true in relation to the post-Hellenistic and late antique
philosophical use of, and debate on, music and harmonics, which has
received little attention compared to the consideration given to the
interplay between music and philosophy in the Classical and
Hellenistic periods.5
The point is even more astonishing if one considers that from the
Imperial Age to Late Antiquity, especially in the context of the
Platonist tradition, music and harmonic theory are mostly exploited
from a philosophical point of view. During these centuries music
becomes a privileged instrument to conceptualise philosophical
doctrines and discuss them. Notions borrowed from the musical
culture are employed in the investigation of fundamental
philosophical fields, such as ethics, cosmology, and metaphysics, and
strongly contribute to shaping them. More specifically, in works from
this period, an interest in music lies at the core of fundamental
philosophical activities, from exegetical practices to the development
of ethical, epistemological, and cosmological doctrines. This makes
an enquiry into the philosophical use of music and harmonics in this
period not only promising but also crucial for getting to the core of
the links between music and philosophy in Antiquity and for
exploring a new and effective path towards a fresh understanding of
post-Hellenistic and late antique philosophy.
The present volume is designed to fill this gap in the scholarship by

drawing a picture of the relationship between music and philosophy
across a long time span, from the work of Philo of Alexandria at the
beginning of the Imperial age to that of John Philoponus at the end
of Antiquity. All the philosophers and philosophical movements dealt
with in the volume make interesting use of musical notions to
address crucial philosophical issues and provide some clear examples
of how sophisticated the dialogue between music, as a highly
technical field, and philosophy was during the last centuries of
ancient thought. In particular, the reader will be struck by the
presence of some central topics common to different philosophical
approaches: the use of musical notions for exegetical purposes, the
presence of philosophical accounts in technical works on music, the
use of musical 4 This is the aim of our project for a collection, with a
translation and commentary, of texts testifying to a philosophical use
of music from the Presocratics to Middle Platonism: Pelosi
forthcoming; Pelosi and Petrucci forthcoming.
5 Some remarkable, yet isolated, attempts to survey the links

between music and philosophy in Late Antiquity can be found in
O’Meara 2005 and 2007, and Sheppard 2005.
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Introduction
images and notions in argumentative accounts with the aim of

demonstrating the superiority of a particular philosophical view or
way of life, and the use of concepts borrowed from the musical field
as paradigms in the description and interpretation of ethical,
ontological, cosmological, and metaphysical elements. This is an
entirely new narrative, whose development really sheds light on the
philosophical debates and theoretical constructions of a fundamental
period of ancient thought.
The structure of the book aims to bring together both a diachronic

perspective, focused on the different philosophical approaches to
music across time, and a thematic point of view, centred on the
main topics and notions characterising the interplay between music
and philosophy in the Imperial age and Late Antiquity. By broadly
following a chronological order, the book aims to show how the
exchange between music and philosophy unfolds throughout key
moments in the history of ancient thought in this period, and what
philosophical trends emerged – or remained constant – throughout
the centuries. At the same time, the thematic structure of the
volume allows the reader to fully appreciate the main concepts at
stake when music is intertwined with philosophy: for instance, in the
first part of the book, a section including chapters on Alexander of
Aphrodisias, Sextus Empiricus, and Ptolemy provides analyses of the
role played by musical notions in the conceptualisation of ontological
matters, as well as reflections on the very status of music and its
scientific study in the post-Hellenistic age. This section is designed to
draw attention to some ontological and epistemological issues which
prove to be essential tenets underpinning the interplay between
music and philosophy in the works of this period (see below, pp. 10–
12, for a more detailed introduction to this point).
Before illustrating the main contents of the volume in detail, an

overview of earlier philosophical approaches to music may be useful,
so as to put our enquiry in the right historiographical perspective. By
the dawn of the Imperial age, the philosophical use of music has
already undergone crucial developments in different philosophical
traditions rooted in the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods. As
is widely known, music plays a pivotal role in the investigations of
some Pythagoreans such as Hippasus, Philolaus, and Archytas, who
extensively discuss musical notions and lay the foundations for their
philosophical use from a range of points of view.
Although mainstream views on the Pythagorean approach to music,

from Aristoxenus onwards, tend to emphasise its mathematical
aspects – that is, roughly speaking, the tendency to analyse musical
phenomena in terms of numerical ratios – the Pythagorean
investigations, at the crossroads 1 5 6
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between music and philosophy, are far more diverse than this
feature might suggest. Indeed, they provide insights into central
areas of ancient philosophical thought, such as the philosophy of
science, and in particular acoustics, epistemology, and cosmology.6
Therefore, at the beginning of the Classical age the encounter
between music and philosophy already shows its thought-provoking
potential and produces some important outcomes.
With Plato’s reflection, which stands out as the first articulate and
sustained analysis of the philosophical import of music, the link
between the two fields is further explored and definitively
established as the fundamental interaction between two central
areas of ancient Greek culture. As is well known, music plays a
crucial role in Plato’s accounts of ethics and politics, both in the
Republic (books 2–3) and in the Laws (books 2 and 7).
Behind these treatments there lies a refined analysis of the

psychophysical impact of music, hinging on Plato’s view about body
and soul and their relationship. By investigating how music
stimulates sense-perception, emotions, and cognitive processes,
Plato fully exploits the pedagogical and psychagogical qualities of
music, not least by making it a valuable resource within a higher
educational programme – the one conceived for rulers in Resp. 7 –
in which harmonics plays an important part. Midway between the
sensible and the intelligible, music is a hot philosophical topic in
Plato, providing a number of insights into the core of his philosophy
(i.e.
the distinction between two ontological and epistemological

domains).
The philosophical relevance of music, and its twofold nature as

something both sensible and intelligible, is further explored in the
Timaeus, where some perceptive analyses of sound and hearing are
combined with the notion of an entirely intelligible music, namely the
harmonic ratios out of which the world soul is fashioned (Ti. 35a-
36e). The account of the world soul, which will have an
extraordinary influence on philosophers in the Imperial age and in
Late Antiquity, as well as on Renaissance conceptions of the links
between man and the cosmos, clearly shows how pervasive musical
notions are in Plato’s philosophy, as they touch upon all areas of his
thought – ontology, epistemology, psychology, ethics, politics, and 6
To summarise the contribution of the three above-mentioned
Pythagoreans in a handful of lines (which hardly do justice to them):
Hippasus is credited with one of the first experiments in acoustics
(18B12 DK), while Philolaus’ theories imply complex relationships
between music theory and cosmology, based on the notion of
harmonia, a key concept both in music and in the cosmological
theory (44B6 DK); as for Archytas, his works on acoustics and
harmonics are landmark ones (47B1
DK, 47B2 DK), and his authority in the musical field is acknowledged
throughout Antiquity. On the Pythagorean view and use of music,
see especially Burkert 1972, 350–400, Barker 2007, 263–307, Zhmud
2012a, 285–313, and Horky 2013, 222–58.
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Introduction
cosmology. Plato’s account provides a key to grasping the close link

between the place of music in human life and its role in the
intelligible world.7
Plato’s analyses of musical phenomena – and particularly his

interpretation of the ethical and political role of music – have a great
impact on Aristotle, who acknowledges that music can significantly
shape a person’s character and dwel s at length on the social and
political impact of music in the eighth book of the Politics. More
original y, perhaps, he also makes room for the non-educational
purposes that music can be used for, such as amusement and
catharsis. Besides the extensive account of Politics 8, some
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decorative. Meditative oxen, drawing a primitive plough made of a
pointed stick, loosen the soil for the new planting, and tiny green
wheat-shoots, first of the three regular crops of the year, wait for the
warm winter sun that opens the plum-blossoms.
Above and beyond Sugita is Minë, a temple on a mountain-top,
with a background of dense pine forest, a foreground of bamboos,
and an old priest, whose successful use of the moxa brings sufferers
from long distances for treatment. A bridle-path follows for several
miles the knife-edge of a ridge commanding noble views of sea and
shore, of the blue Hakone range, its great sentinel Oyama, and Fuji
beyond. The high ridge of Minë is the backbone of a great
promontory running out into the sea, the Bay of Yeddo on one side
and Odawara Bay on the other. Square sails of unnumbered fishing-
boats fleck the blue horizon, and the view seaward is unbroken.
Over an old race-course and archery-range of feudal days the path
leads, till at a sudden turn it strikes into a pine forest, where the
horses’ hoofs fall noiseless on thick carpets of dry pine-needles, and
the cave-like twilight, coolness, and stillness seem as solemn as in
that wood where Virgil and Dante walked, before they visited the
circles of the other world.
A steep plunge down a slippery, clayey trail takes the rider from
the melancholy darkness to a solitary forest clearing, with low temple
buildings on one side. Here, massed against feathery fronds of giant
bamboos, blaze boughs of fine-leafed maples, all vivid crimson to
the tips. While the priests bring saké tubs, and the amado, or outside
shutters of their house, to make a table, and improvise benches with
various temple and domestic properties, visitors may wander through
the forest to open spaces, whence all the coasts of the two bays and
every valley of the province lie visible, and a column of smoke
proclaims the living volcano on Oshima’s island, far down the coast.
Groups of cheery pilgrims come chattering down from the forest,
untie their sandals, wash their feet, and disappear within the temple;
where the old priest writes sacred characters on their bared backs to
indicate where his attendant shall place the lumps of sticky moxa
dough. Another attendant goes down the line of victims and touches
a light to these cones, which burn with a slow, red glow, and hiss and
smoke upon the flesh for agonizing seconds. The priest reads pious
books and casts up accounts, while the patients endure without a
groan tortures compared with which the searing with the white-hot
irons of Parisian moxa treatment is comfortable. The Minë priest has
some secret of composition for his moxa dough which has kept it in
favor for many years, and almost the only revenue of the temple is
derived from this source. Rheumatism, lumbago, and paralysis yield
to the moxa treatment, and the Japanese resort to it for all their
aches and ills, the coolies’ backs and legs being often finely
patterned with its scars.
The prospect from Minë’s promontory is rivalled by that at
Kanozan, directly across the Bay, one of the highest points on the
long tongue of separating land. Here are splendid old temples,
almost unvisited by foreigners, but the glory of the place is the view
of the ninety-nine valleys, of Yeddo Bay, the ocean, and the ever-
dominant Fujiyama. Every Japanese knows the famous landscapes
of his country, and the mention of these ninety-nine valleys and the
thousand pine-clad islands of Matsuyama brings a light to his eyes.
At Yokosuka, fifteen miles below Yokohama, are the Government
arsenal, navy-yard, and dry docks, with their fleets of war-ships that
put to shame the American squadron in Asiatic waters. The
Japanese Government has both constructed and bought a navy;
some vessels coming from Glasgow yards, and others having been
built at these docks.
Uraga, reached from Yokosuka by a winding, Cornice-like road
along the coast, is doubly notable as being the port off which
Commodore Perry’s ships first anchored, and the place where midzu
ame, or millet honey, is made. The whole picturesque, clean little
town is given up to the production of the amber sweet, and there are
certain families whose midzu ame has not varied in excellence for
more than three hundred years. The rice, or millet, is soaked,
steamed, mixed with warm water and barley malt, and left to stand a
few hours, when a clear yellow liquid is drawn off and boiled down to
a thick syrup or paste, or cooked until it can be moulded into hard
balls. Unaffected by weather, it is the best of Japanese sweets, and
in its semiliquid stage is twisted out on chopsticks at all seasons of
the year. The older and browner the midzu ame is, the better. It may
be called the apotheosis of butter-scotch, a glorified Oriental taffy,
constantly urged upon one for one’s own good, and conceded by
foreign physicians in Japan to be of great value for dyspeptics and
consumptives. Though prepared all over the empire, this curative
sweet is the specialty of Uraga; and the secrets and formulas held in
the old families make for Uraga midzu ame, as compared with other
productions, a reputation akin to that of the Grande Chartreuse, or
Schloss Johannisberger, among other cordials or wines. Street
artists mould midzu ame paste, and blow it with a pipe into myriad
fantastic shapes for their small patrons; while at the greatest
banquets, and even on the Emperor’s table, it appears in the fanciful
flowers that decorate every feast.
CHAPTER V
KAMAKURA AND ENOSHIMA
The contemporary Yankee might anticipate the sage reflections of

the future New Zealander on London Bridge were there left enough
ruins of the once great city of Kamakura to sit upon; but the military
capital of the Middle Ages has melted away into rice fields and millet
patches. One must wrestle seriously with the polysyllabic guide-book
stories of the shoguns, regents, and heroes who made the glory of
Kamakura, and attracted to it a population of five hundred thousand,
to repeople these lonely tracts with the splendid military pageants of
which they were the scene.
The plain of Kamakura is a semicircle, bounded by hills and facing
the open Pacific, the surf pounding on its long yellow beach between
two noble promontories. The Dai Butsu, the great bronze image of
Buddha, which has kept Kamakura from sinking entirely into
obscurity during the centuries of its decay, stands in a tiny valley a
half-mile back from the shore. The Light of Asia is seated on the
lotus flower, his head bent forward in meditation, his thumbs joined,
and his face wearing an expression of the most benignant calm. This
is one of the few great show-pieces in Japan that is badly placed and
lacks a proper approach. Seen, like the temple gate-ways and
pagodas of Nikko, at the end of a long avenue of trees, or on some
height silhouetted against the sky, Dai Butsu (Great Buddha) would
be far more imposing. Within the image is a temple forty-nine feet in
height; and through an atmosphere thick with incense may be read
the chalked names of ambitious tourists, who have evaded the
priests and left their signatures on the irregular bronze walls. An
alloy of tin and a little gold is mingled with the copper, and on the
joined thumbs and hands, over which visitors climb to sit for their
photographs, the bronze is polished enough to show its fine dark tint.
The rest of the statue is dull and weather-stained, its rich incrustation
disclosing the seams where the huge sections were welded together.
A pretty landscape-garden, banks of blossoming plum-trees, and
the usual leper at the gate-way furnish the accustomed temple
accessories, and Buddha broods and meditates serene in his quiet
sanctuary. The photographic skill of the priest brings a good revenue
to the temple, and a fund is being slowly raised for building a huge
pavilion above the great deity, like that which stood there three
hundred years ago. During his six centuries of holy contemplation at
Kamakura, Dai Butsu has endured many disasters. Earthquakes
have made him nod and sway on the lotus pedestal, and tidal waves
have twice swept over and destroyed the sheltering temple, the great
weight and thickness of the bronze keeping the statue itself
unharmed.
Kamakura is historic ground, and each shrine has its legends. The
great temple of Hachiman, the God of War, remains but as a
fragment of its former self, the buildings standing at the head of a
high stone-embanked terrace, from which a broad avenue of trees
runs straight to the sea, a mile and a half away. Here are the tomb of
Yoritomo and the cave tombs of his faithful Satsuma and Chosen
Daimios; and the priests guard sacredly the sword of Yoritomo, that
of Hachiman himself, the helmet of Iyeyasu, and the bow of Iyemitsu.
In the spring, Kamakura is a delightful resort, on whose dazzling
beach climate and weather are altogether different from those of
Yokohama or Tokio. In summer-time, the steady south wind, or
monsoon, blows straight from the ocean, and the pine grove
between the hotel and shore is musical all day long with the pensive
sough of its branches. In winter it is open and sunny, and the hot
sea-water baths, the charming walks and sails, the old temples and
odd little villages, attract hosts of visitors.
On bright spring mornings men, women, and children gather sea-
weed and spread it to dry on the sand, after which it is converted into
food as delicate as our Iceland moss. Both farmers and fishermen
glean this salty harvest, and after a storm, whole families collect the
flotsam and jetsam of kelp and sea-fronds. Barelegged fisher-
maidens, with blue cotton kerchiefs tied over their heads, and
baskets on their backs, roam along the shore; children dash in and
out of the frothing waves, and babies roll contentedly in the sand;
men and boys wade knee-deep in the water, and are drenched by
the breakers all day long, with the mercury below 50°, in spite of the
warm, bright sun. Women separate the heaps of sea-weed, and at
intervals regale their dripping lords with cups of hot tea, bowls of
rice, and shredded fish. It is all so gay and beautiful, every one is so
merry and happy, that Kamakura life seems made up of rejoicing and
abundance, with no darker side.
The poor in Japan are very poor, getting comparative comfort out
of smaller means than any other civilized people in the world. A few
cotton garments serve for all seasons alike. The cold winds of winter
nip their bare limbs and pierce their few thicknesses of cloth, and the
fierce heat of summer torments them; but they endure these
extremes with stoical good-nature, and enjoy their lovely spring and
autumn the more. A thatched roof, a straw mat, and a few cotton
wadded futons, or comforters, afford the Japanese laborer shelter,
furniture, and bedding, while rice, millet, fish, and sea-weed
constitute his food. With three crops a year growing in his fields, the
poor farmer supports his family on a patch of land forty feet square;
and with three hundred and sixty varieties of food fish swimming in
Japanese waters, the fisherman need not starve. Perfect cleanliness
of person and surroundings is as much an accompaniment of
poverty as of riches.
Beyond Kamakura’s golden bow lies another beach—the strand of
Katase, at the end of which rises Enoshima, the Mont St. Michel of
the Japanese coast. Enoshima is an island at high tide, rising
precipitously from the sea on all sides save to the landward, where
the precipice front is cleft with a deep wooded ravine, that runs out
into the long tongue of sand connecting with the shore at low tide.
Like every other island of legendary fame, Enoshima rose from the
sea in a single night. Its tutelary genius is the goddess Benten, one
of the seven household deities of good-fortune. She is worshipped in
temples and shrines all over the woody summit of the island, and in
a deep cave opening from the sea. Shady paths, moss-grown
terraces, and staircases abound, and little tea-houses and tateba
offer seats, cheering cups of tea, and enchanting views. The near
shores, the limitless waters of the Pacific, and the grand sweep of
Odawara Bay afford the finest setting for Fujiyama anywhere to be
enjoyed.
Enoshima’s crest is a very Forest of Arden, an enchanted place of
lovely shade. The sloping ravine which gives access to it holds only
the one street, or foot-path, lined with tea-houses and shell-shops,
all a-flutter with pilgrim flags and banners. The shells are cut into
whistles, spoons, toys, ornaments, and hair-pins; and tiny pink ones
of a certain variety form the petals of most perfect cherry blossoms,
which are fastened to natural branches and twigs.
The fish dinners of Enoshima are famous, and the Japanese, who
have the genius of cookery, provide more delicious fish dishes than
can be named. At the many tateba set up in temple yards or
balanced on the edges of precipices, conch-shells, filled with a black
stew like terrapin, simmer over charcoal fires. This concoction has a
tempting smell, and the pilgrims, who pick at the inky morsels with
their chopsticks, seem to enjoy it; but in the estimation of the
foreigner it adds one more to the list of glutinous, insipid
preparations with which the Japanese cuisine abounds. The great
marine curiosity of Enoshima is the giant crab, with its body as large
as a turtle, and claws measuring ten, and even twelve, feet from tip
to tip. These crustaceans are said to promenade the beach at night,
and glare with phosphorescent eyes. Another interesting Japanese
crab, the Doryppe Japonica, comes more often from the Inland Sea.
A man’s face is distinctly marked on the back of the shell, and, as
the legend avers, these creatures incarnate the souls of the faithful
samurai, who, following the fortunes of the Tairo clan, were driven
into the sea by the victorious Minamoto. At certain anniversary
seasons, well known to true believers, the spirits of these dead
warriors come up from the sea by thousands and meet together on a
moonlit beach.
Enoshima must have become the favorite summer resort of the
region, had not the whole island been reserved as an imperial
demesne and site for a sea-shore palace. When typhoons rage or
storms sweep in from the ocean, billows ring the island round with
foam, spray dashes up to the drooping foliage on the summit, the air
is full of the wild breath and wilder roar of the breakers, while the
very ground seems to tremble. The underground shrine of Benten is
then closed to worshippers, and looking down the sheer two hundred
feet of rock, one sees only the whirl and rage of waters that hide the
entrance. When these storms rage, visitors are sometimes
imprisoned for days upon the island. At low tide and in ordinary seas
Benten’s shrine is easily entered by a ledge of rocks, the hard thing
being the climb up the long stone stair-ways to the top of the island
again. Guides are numerous, and an old man or a small boy
generally attaches himself to a company of strangers, and is so
friendly, polite, and amiable, that, after escorting it unbidden round
the island, he generally wins his cause, and is bidden to maru maru
(go sight-seeing) as escort and interpreter.
CHAPTER VI
TOKIO
The first view of Tokio, like the first view of Yokohama, disappoints
the traveller. The Ginza, or main business street, starting from the
bridge opposite the station, goes straight to Nihombashi, the
northern end of the Tokaido, and the recognized centre of the city,
from which all distances are measured. Most of the road-way is lined
with conventional houses of foreign pattern, with their curb-stones
and shade-trees, while the tooting tram-car and the rattling basha, or
light omnibus, emphasize the incongruities of the scene. This is not
the Yeddo of one’s dreams, nor yet is it an Occidental city. Its stucco
walls, wooden columns, glaring shop-windows, and general air of
tawdry imitation fairly depress one. In so large a city there are many
corners, however, which the march of improvement has not reached,
odd, unexpected, and Japanese enough to atone for the rest.
Through the heart of Tokio winds a broad spiral moat, encircling
the palace in its innermost ring, and reaching, by canal branches, to
the river on its outer lines. In feudal days the Shogun’s castle
occupied the inner ring, and within the outer rings were the yashikis,
or spread-out houses, of his daimios. Each gate-way and angle of
the moat was defended by towers, and the whole region was an
impregnable camp. Every daimio in the empire had his yashiki in
Tokio, where he was obliged to spend six months of each year, and
in case of war to send his family as pledges of his loyalty to the
Shogun. The Tokaido and the other great highways of the empire
were always alive with the trains of these nobles, and from this
migratory habit was developed the passion for travel and excursion
that animates every class of the Japanese people. When the
Emperor came up from Kioto and made Tokio his capital, the
Shogun’s palace became his home, and all the Shogun’s property
reverted to the crown, the yashikis of the daimios being confiscated
for government use. In the old days the barrack buildings
surrounding the great rectangle of the yashiki were the outer walls,
protected by a small moat, and furnished with ponderous, gable-
roofed gate-ways, drawbridges, sally-ports, and projecting windows
for outlooks. These barracks accommodated the samurai, or
soldiers, attached to each daimio, and within their lines were the
parade ground and archery range, the residence of the noble family,
and the homes of the artisans in his employ. With the new
occupation many yashiki buildings were razed to the ground, and
imposing edifices in foreign style erected for government offices. A
few of the old yashiki remain as barracks, and their white walls,
resting on black foundations, suggest the monotonous street views
of feudal days. Other yashiki have fallen to baser uses, and sign-
boards swing from their walls.
Modern sanitary science has plucked up the miles of lotus beds
that hid the triple moats in midsummer. From the bridges the lounger
used to overlook acres of pink and white blossoms rising above the
solid floors of bluish-green leaves; but the Philistines could not
uproot the moats, which remain the one perfect feudal relic of
Japanese Yeddo. The many-angled gate-ways, the massive stone
walls, and escarpments, all moss and lichen-grown, and sloping from
the water with an inward curve, are noble monuments of the past.
Every wall and embankment is crowned with crooked, twisted,
creeping, century-old pines, that fling their gaunt arms wildly out, or
seem to grope along the stones. Here and there on the innermost
rings of the moat still rise picturesque, many-gabled towers, with
white walls and black roofs, survivors from that earlier day when they
guarded the shiro, or citadel, and home of the Shogun.
The army is always in evidence in Tokio, and the little soldiers in
winter dress of dark-blue cloth, or summer suits of white duck,
swarm in the neighborhood of the moats. In their splendid uniforms,
the dazzling officers, rising well in the saddle, trot by on showy
horses. On pleasant mornings, shining companies of cavalry file
down the line of the inner moat and through the deep bays of the
now dismantled Cherry-Tree gate to the Hibiya parade-ground,
where they charge and manœuvre. When it rains, the files of
mounted men look like so many cowled monks, with the peaked
hoods of their great coats drawn over their heads, and they charge,
gallop, and countermarch through mud and drizzle, as if in a real
campaign. Taking the best of the German, French, Italian, and British
military systems, with instructors of all these nationalities, the
Japanese army stands well among modern fighting forces. There is
a military genius in the people, and the spirit of the old samurai has
leavened the nation, making the natty soldiers of to-day worthy the
traditions of the past.
A large foreign colony is resident in Tokio, the diplomatic corps,
the great numbers of missionaries, and those employed by the
Government in the university, schools, and departments constituting
a large community. The missionary settlement now holds the Tsukiji
district near the railway station; that piece of made ground along the
shore first ceded for the exclusive occupation of foreigners. Besides
being malarial, Tsukiji was formerly the rag-pickers’ district, and its
selection was not complimentary to the great powers, all of whose
legations have now left it. To reside outside of Tsukiji was permitted
to non-officials in extra-territorial times only when in Japanese
employ. Any who chose to live in Tokio were claimed as teachers by
some kindly Japanese friend, who became responsible for the
stranger’s conduct. Before the revision of the treaties with foreign
powers, which compacts became operative July 17, 1899, a
foreigner could not go twenty-five miles beyond a treaty-port without
a passport from the Japanese foreign office issued after a personal
application to his legation in Tokio. Each place which he wished to
visit had to be named, and immediately upon his arrival at a tea-
house, the district policeman called for the passport and registered
the stranger. Any one attempting to travel without a passport was
promptly escorted to the nearest treaty-port. European tourists had a
formidable list of rules of conduct which their ministers exhorted
them to observe—that they should not quarrel, deface monuments,
destroy trees or shrubs, break windows, or go to fires on horseback.
The American tourist was trusted to behave without such minute
instructions, and at Kobé could visit the Kencho and ask a permit to
visit Kioto without the intervention of his consul—a recognition of the
freedom and independence of the American citizen, and a tribute to
the individual sovereignty of his nation, concerning which a
Japanese poet wrote:
“What are those strangely-clad beings

Who move quickly from one spot of interest to another
Like butterflies flitting from flower to flower?
These are Americans,
They are as restless as the ocean,
In one day they will learn more of a city
Than an inhabitant will in a year.
Are they not extraordinary persons?”
All the legations are now on the high ground in the western part of
the city near the castle moats. All legation buildings are owned and
kept up by their respective governments. The Japanese
Government, having offered to give the land if the United States
would erect a permanent legation, finally built and rented the present
structure to the great republic before it was purchased.
The English possess a whole colony of buildings in the midst of a
large walled park, affording offices and residences for all the staff.
Germany, Russia, France, and the Netherlands own handsome
houses with grounds. The Chinese legation occupied part of an old
yashiki until a beautiful modern structure replaced the “spread-out-
house” of such picturesqueness, and iron grilles succeeded the
quaint, old pea-green and vermilion gate-way.
The show places of Tokio are the many government museums at
Uyéno Park, the many mortuary temples of the Tokugawa Shoguns
at Shiba and Uyéno, the popular temple of Asakusa, and the Shinto
temple at the Kudan, with its race-course and view of the city; but the
Kanda, the Kameido, the Hachiman temples, many by-streets and
queer corners, the out-door fairs, the peddlers, and shops give the
explorer a better understanding of the life of the people than do the
great monuments. Here and there he comes upon queer old
nameless temples with ancient trees, stones, lanterns, tanks, and
urns that recall a forgotten day of religious influence, when they
possessed priests, revenues, and costly altars.
An army of jinrikisha coolies waits for passengers at the station,
and among them is that Japanese Mercury, the winged-heeled
Sanjiro, he of the shaven crown and gun-hammer topknot of samurai
days. His biography includes a tour of Europe as the servant of a
Japanese official. On returning to Tokio he took up the shafts of his
kuruma again, and is the fountain-head of local news and gossip. He
knows what stranger arrived yesterday, who gave dinner parties, in
which tea-house the “man-of-war gentlemen” had a geisha dinner,
where your friends paid visits, even what they bought, and for whom
court or legation carriages were sent. He tells you whose house you
are passing, what great man is in view, where the next matsuri will
be, when the cherry blossoms will unfold, and what plays are coming
out at the Shintomiza. Sanjiro is cyclopædic at the theatre, and as a
temple guide he exhales ecclesiastical lore. To take a passenger on
a round of official calls, to and from state balls or a palace garden
party, he finds bliss unalloyed, and his explanations pluck out the
heart of the mystery of Tokio. “Mikado’s mamma,” prattles Sanjiro in
his baby-English, as he trots past the green hedge and quiet gate of
the Empress Dowager’s palace, and “Tenno San,” he murmurs, in
awed tones, as the lancers and outriders of the Emperor appear.
First, he carries the tourist to Shiba, the old monastery grounds
that are now a public park. Under the shadow of century-old pines
and cryptomeria stand the mortuary temples of the later Shoguns,
superb edifices ablaze with red and gold lacquer, and set with panels
of carved wood, splendid in color and gilding, the gold trefoil of the
Tokugawas shining on every ridge-pole and gable. These temples
and tombs are lesser copies of the magnificent shrines at Nikko, and
but for those originals would be unique. On a rainy day, the green
shadow and gloom, the cawing of the ravens that live in the old pine-
trees, and their slow flight, are solemn as death itself; and the
solitude of the dripping avenues and court-yards, broken only by the
droning priests at prayer, and the musical vibrations of some bell or
sweet-voiced gong, invite a gentle melancholy. On such a day, the
priests, interrupted in their statuesque repose, or their pensive
occupation of sipping tea and whiffing tiny pipes in silent groups
around a brazier, display to visitors the altars and ceilings and
jewelled walls with painstaking minuteness, glad of one ripple of
excitement and one legitimate fee. Led by a lean, one-toothed priest,
you follow, stocking-footed, over lacquer floors to behold gold and
bronze, lacquer and inlaying, carving and color, golden images
sitting in golden shadows, enshrined among golden lotus flowers,
and sacred emblems. In one temple the clear, soft tones of the
bronze gong, a bowl eighteen inches in diameter and a little less in
depth, vibrate on the air for three full minutes before they die away.
Up mossy stair-ways, between massive embankments, and
through a shady grove, the priest’s clogs scrape noisily to the
hexagonal temple, where the ashes of Hidetada, the Ni Dai Shogun,
Iyeyasu’s son, lie in a great gold lacquer cylinder, the finest existing
specimen of the lacquer of that great art age. The quiet of Shiba, the
solemn background of giant trees, the deep shadows and green
twilight of the groves, the hundreds of stone lanterns, the ponds of
sacred lotus, the succession of dragon-guarded gate-ways, and
carved and gorgeously-colored walls, crowd the memory with lovely
pictures. Near a hill-top pagoda commanding views of the Bay and of
Fuji, stands the tateba of a cheerful family, who bring the visitor a
telescope and cups of cherry-blossom tea.
A colony of florists show gardens full of wonderful plants and
dwarf-trees, and then Sanjiro minces, “I think more better we go see
more temples;” and we go, spinning past the giant Shiba gate and up
the road to Atago Yama, a tiny temple on the edge of a precipitous
hill-top, approached by men’s stairs, an air-line flight of broad steps,
and women’s stairs, curving by broken flights of easier slope. A
leper, with scaly, white skin and hideous ulcers, extends his
miserable hand for alms, and picturesque, white-clad pilgrims, with
staff and bell, go up and down those breathless flights. The tateba,
with their rows of lanterns, where the nesans offer tea of salted
cherry blossoms, that unfold again into perfect flowers in the bottom
of the cup, overhang the precipice wall, and look down upon the
Shiba quarter as upon a relief map.
A breathless rush of two miles or more straight across the city,
past flying shops, beside the tooting tram-way and over bridges, and
Sanjiro runs into Uyéno Park, with its wide avenues, enormous trees,
and half-hidden temple roofs. The ground slopes away steeply at the
left, and at the foot of the hill lies a lotus lake of many acres that is a
pool of blossoms in midsummer. A temple and a tiny tea-house are
on an island in the centre, and around the lake the race-course is
overarched with cherry-trees. Great torii mark the paths and stairs
leading from the shore to the temples above.
At Uyéno are more tombs and more sanctuaries, avenues of
lanterns, bells, and drinking-fountains, and a black, bullet-marked
gate-way, where the Yeddo troops made their last stand before the
Restoration. Near this gate-way is the sturdy young tree planted by
General Grant. Far back in the park stand the mortuary temples,
splendid monuments of Tokugawa riches and power, though the
most splendid, here as at Shiba, have been destroyed by fire.
When the Tokio Fine Arts Club holds one of its loan exhibitions in
its Uyéno Park house, Sanjiro is inexorable, deposits his fare at the
door-way, shows the way to the ticket-office, and insists upon his
seeing the best work of the great artists. The noble club-men
contribute specimens from their collections of lacquer, porcelain,
ivories, bronzes, and kakemonos. Behind glass doors hang
kakemonos by the great artists, and Japanese visitors gaze with
reverence on the masterpieces of the Kano and Tosa schools. The
great art treasures of the empire are sequestrated in private houses
and godowns, and to acquire familiarity with them, to undertake an
art education in semiannual instalments by grace of the Fine Arts
Club, is a discouraging endeavor. It would be more hopeful to seek
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the British Museum, or Mr.
Walters’s Baltimore galleries, which contain an epitome of all
Japanese art. At the Tokio Club, however, works of Sosen and
Hokusai, the two masters of the last century, are often exhibited.
Sosen painted inimitable monkeys, and connoisseurs of to-day
award him the tardy fame which his contemporaries failed to give. As
a rule, foreigners prefer Hokusai to all other masters, and they
search old book-shops in the hope of stumbling upon one of the
innumerable books illustrated and sometimes engraved by this
prolific genius. His genius never lacked recognition, and a century
ago all feudal Yeddo went wild over his New-year’s cards, each one
a characteristic and unique bit of landscape, caricature, or fantasy.
His fourteen volumes of Mangwa, or rough sketches, and his One
Hundred Views of Fuji are most celebrated; but wonderfully clever
are his jokes, his giants, dwarfs, demons, goblins, and ghosts; and
when he died, at the age of ninety, he sighed that he could not live
long enough to paint something which he should himself esteem.
After the visit to the club Sanjiro takes his patron to the tomb of
Hokusai, in a near-by temple yard, and shows the brushes hung up
by despairing and prayerful artists, who would follow his immortal
methods.
East of Uyéno stands the great Asakusa temple, shrine of one of
the most famous of the thirty-three famous Kwannons of the empire,
the great place of worship for the masses, and the centre of a Vanity
Fair unequalled elsewhere. Every street leading to the temple
grounds is a bazaar and merry fair, and theatres, side shows,
booths, and tents, and all the devices to entrap the idle and the
pleasure-seeking, beset the pilgrim on his way to the sanctuary. In
florists’ gardens are shown marvels of floriculture, in their ponds
swim goldfish with wonderfully fluted tails, and in tall bamboo cages
perch Tosa chickens with tail feathers ten and twelve feet long.
Menageries draw the wondering rustics, and they pay their coppers
for the privilege of toiling up a wood, canvas, and pasteboard
Fujiyama to view the vast plain of the city lying all around it, and on
timbered slopes enjoy tobogganing in midsummer. Penetrating to the
real gate-way, it is found guarded by giant Nio, whose gratings are
spotted with the paper prayers that the worshipful have chewed into
balls and reverently thrown there. If the paper wad sticks to the
grating, it is a favorable omen, and the believer may then turn the
venerable old prayer-wheel, and farther on put his shoulder to the
bar, and by one full turn of the revolving library of Buddhist scriptures
endow himself with all its intellectual treasure.
The soaring roof of the great temple is fitly shadowed by camphor-
trees and cryptomeria that look their centuries of age, and up the
broad flagging there passes the ceaseless train of believers. One
buys corn and feeds the hundreds of pigeons, messengers of the
gods, who live secure and petted by all the crowds in the great
enclosure, or pays his penny to secure the release of a captive
swallow, that flies back every night to its owner. At the foot of the
steps the pilgrim begins to pray, and, ascending, mumbles his way to
the altar. The colossal money-box, which is said to gather in over a
thousand dollars on great holidays, rings and echoes well to the fall
of the smallest coin. The sides of the temple are open to the air, and
the visitor may retain shoes and clogs, so that the clatter of these
wooden soles, the pilgrims’ clapping and mumbling, mingle in one
distracting roar.
Tame pigeons fly in and out through the open walls, and children
chase each other across the floor; but behind the grating candles
burn, bells tinkle, priests chant, and rows of absorbed worshippers
clap, toss their coppers, and pray, oblivious of all their surroundings.
CHAPTER VII
TOKIO—CONTINUED
There are no such holiday-makers as the Japanese. The whole

twelvemonth is fête-time, and the old year held three hundred and
sixty-five festivals and anniversaries. All the great days of the
Chinese calendar are observed, and the death-day of past
sovereigns, instead of the birthday; while each religion, each sect,
each temple, and each neighborhood has its own fête or matsuri,
religious in its origin. Every night different temple grounds and
different streets glow with lanterns and torches, an out-door fair is in
full progress, and happy, laughing, chattering men, women, and
children enjoy it all. The evening flower-fairs are as characteristic
and picturesque as anything in Japan. The smoke of blazing
flambeaux, the smell of the women’s camellia seed hair-oil, and the
mingled odors from booths and portable restaurants, are not enticing
on a hot night, but at least they offend in an “artless Japanese way.”
The booths along the whole length of the Ginza offer innumerable
odd notions, queer toys, pretty hair-pins, curios, and indescribable
trifles, every night in the year. The Japanese hair-pin, by-the-bye, is
a dangerous vanity, the babies often twisting themselves into the
range of its point, and the mothers impaling them on it in shaking
them up higher on their backs and tightening the bands that hold
them. The comic and ingenious toys, embodying the simplest
principles of mechanics, and by the aid of a little running water, or
the heat of a candle, performing wonderful feats, are such trifles of
bamboo, thin pine, paper, or straw, as American children would
destroy at a touch. Yet the more truly civilized Japanese little people
play with them for weeks; and they toddle home with minute wicker
cages of semi, or cicada, on one finger, content to hang them up and
listen peaceably to the strident captives’ chirping mi-mi-mi all day
long.
THE SEMI’S CAGE
The first week of March is gala time for the small girls of Japan,
when their Hina Matsuri, or Feast of Dolls, is celebrated. Then do toy
shops and doll shops double in number and take on dazzling
features, while children in gay holiday clothes animate the streets.
Little girls with hair elaborately dressed, tied with gold cords and
bright crape, and gowns and girdles of the brightest colors, look like
walking dolls themselves. The tiniest toddler is a quaint and comical
figure in the same long gown and long sleeves as its mother, the
gay-patterned kimono, the bright inner garments showing their edges
here and there, and obis shot with gold threads, making them
irresistible. Nothing could be gentler or sweeter than these Japanese
children, and no place a more charming play-ground for them. In the
houses of the rich the Dolls’ Festival is second only to the New Year
in its importance. The family don their richest clothing, and keep
open house for the week. The choicest pictures and art treasures are
displayed, and with these the hina or images that have been
preserved from grandmothers’ and great-grandmothers’ time,
handed down and added to with the arrival of each baby daughter.
These dolls, representing the Emperor, Empress, nobles, and ladies
of the old Kioto court, are sometimes numbered by dozens, and are
dressed in correct and expensive clothing. During the holiday the
dolls are ranged in a row on a shelf like an altar or dais, and food
and gifts are placed before them. The tiny lacquer tables, with their
rice-bowls, teapots, cups, plates, and trays, are miniature and
exquisite likenesses of the family furnishings. Each doll has at least
its own table and dishes, and often a full set of tableware, with which
to entertain other dolls, and amazing prices have been paid for sets
of gold and carved red lacquer dishes, or these Lilliputian sets in
wonderful metal-work. After the festival is over, the host of dolls and
their belongings are put away until the next March; and when the
beautiful images emerge from the storehouses after their long hiding
they are as enchanting as if new. Nothing better illustrates inherent
Japanese ideas of life and enjoyment, and gentleness of manners,
than this bringing out of all the dolls for one long fête week in the
year, and the handing them down from generation to generation.
On the fifth day of the fifth month comes the boys’ holiday. The
outward sign is a tall pole surmounted with a ball of open basket-
work, from which hang the most natural-looking fish made of cloth or
paper. Such a pole is set before every house in which a boy has
been born during the year, or where there are young boys, and some
patriarchal households display a group of poles and a school of carp
flying in the air. These nobori, as the paper carp are called, are of
course symbolic, the carp being one of the strongest fish, stemming
currents, mounting water-falls, and attaining a great age. Many of
these nobori are four or five feet in length, and a hoop holding the
mouth open lets them fill and float with as life-like a motion as if they
were flapping their fins in their own element. In-doors, images and
toys are set out in state array—miniature warriors and wrestlers,
spears, banners, and pennants, and all the decorative paraphernalia
that once enriched a warrior’s train. In all classes children’s parties

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Music and Philosophy in the Roman

Empire 1st Edition Francesco Pelosi

Athletes and Artists in the Roman Empire Bram

The Colonate in the Roman Empire Boudewijn Sirks

Christianity, Philosophy, and Roman Power. Constantine,

Frankness Greek Culture and the Roman Empire Routledge

From the Later Roman Empire to Late Antiquity and

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The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy 1st Edition

Reification and the Aesthetics of Music Routledge

Is music just matter of hearing and producing notes? And is it of

francesco pelosi is Lecturer of History of Ancient Philosophy at the

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IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

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