Let me add also, that
there is something therein which is quite contrary to what education
requires; as the player on the flute is prevented from speaking: for
which reason our forefathers very properly forbade the use of it to
youth and freemen, though they themselves at first used it; for when
their riches procured them greater leisure, they grew more animated in
the cause of virtue; and both before and after the Median war their
noble actions so exalted their minds that they attended to every part
of education; selecting no one in particular, but endeavouring to
collect the whole: for which reason they introduced the flute also, as
one of the instruments they were to learn to play on. At Lacedaemon
the choregus himself played on the flute; and it was so common at
Athens that almost every freeman understood it, as is evident from the
tablet which Thrasippus dedicated when he was choregus; but afterwards
they rejected it as dangerous; having become better judges of what
tended to promote virtue and what did not. For the same reason many of
the ancient instruments were thrown aside, as the dulcimer and the
lyre; as also those which were to inspire those who played on them
with pleasure, and which required a nice finger and great skill to
play well on. What the ancients tell us, by way of fable, of the flute
is indeed very rational; namely, that after Minerva had found it, she
threw it away: nor are they wrong who say that the goddess disliked it
for deforming the face of him who played thereon: not but that it is
more probable that she rejected it as the knowledge thereof
contributed nothing to the improvement of the mind.
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