Abstract

A treatise De musica, ascribed to Plutarch, reflects the music evolution from the beginning of this art in archaic Greece until the early Hellenistic period. Initially, within the spiritual life and the education of the citizens the importance of music education was extremely high. Gradually, during the years, and even since the last part of the 5th c. BC, music, after centuries of dominance, appeared in the spiritual life of the Greeks not as a prevailing feature but as a subsiding one. It was even difficult to maintain its position in the educational system. The participants of the dialogue have been gathered to discuss, investigate and highlight the reasons why this decadence of the role of music has happened, by citing the musicians and recollecting the innovations they brought in the musical practise since the beginning of its history. In the book, apart from the list of musicians and the technical developments they invented, we find information about the views of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and others about the value that music used to have in ancient Greece. The paideutic and moral value of music was the reason why it played a very important role in the education and the three men adopt the most traditionalistic approach and conclude that the technical improvements made it lost ground in favor of the literary studies.