appears to associate plaintive music (mixed Lydian and Hypolydian) with drunkenness, effeminacy, and idleness and considers that such music is “useless even to women that are to be virtuously given, not to say to men.”  He only admits two kinds of music:  one violent and suited to war, the other tranquil and suited to prayer or to persuasion.  He sets out the ethical qualities of music with a thoroughness which almost approaches the great Chinese philosopher:  “On these accounts we attach such importance to a musical education, because rhythm and harmony sink most deeply into the recesses of the soul, and take most powerful hold of it, bringing gracefulness in their train, and making a man graceful if he be rightly nurtured, ... leading him to commend beautiful objects, and gladly receive them into his soul, and feed upon them, and grow to be noble and good.”  Plato is, however, by no means so consistent and thorough as the Chinese moralist, for having thus asserted that it is the influence of music which molds the soul into virtue, he proceeds to destroy his position with the statement that “we shall never become truly musical until we know the essential forms of temperance and courage and liberality and munificence,” thus moving in a circle.  It must be added that the Greek conception of music was very comprehensive and included poetry.

Aristotle took a wider view of music than Plato and admitted a greater variety of uses for it.  He was less anxious to exclude those uses which were not strictly ethical.  He disapproved, indeed, of the Phrygian harmony as the expression of Bacchic excitement.  He accepts, however, the function of music as a katharsis of emotion, a notion which is said to have originated with the Pythagoreans. (For a discussion of Aristotle’s views on music, see W.L.  Newman, The Politics of Aristotle, vol. i, pp. 359-369.)

Athenaeus, in his frequent allusions to music, attributes to it many intellectual and emotional properties (e.g., Book XIV, Chapter XXV) and in one place refers to “melodies inciting to lawless indulgence” (Book XIII, Chapter LXXV).

    We may gather from the Priapeia (XXVI) that cymbals and
    castanets were the special accompaniment in antiquity of wanton
    songs and dances:  “cymbala, cum crotalis, pruriginis arma.”

The ancient belief in the moralizing influence of music has survived into modern times mainly in a somewhat more scientific form as a belief in its therapeutic effects in disordered nervous and mental conditions. (This also is an ancient belief as witnessed by the well-known example of David playing to Saul to dispel his melancholia.) In 1729 an apothecary of Oakham, Richard Broune, published a work entitled Medicina Musica, in which he argued that music was beneficial in many maladies.  In more recent days there have been various experiments and cases brought forward