In Ancient Greek society, music and other creative pursuits were inseparable from Greek mythology. The word music, itself, originates from the "muses", the patron goddesses of creative and intellectual endeavours and daughters of the Greek king of the gods, Zeus. The greatest musician and poet of Greek myth was Orpheus, who was known to charm wild beasts and bring movement and dance into inanimate objects through his music and song.
Music was regarded as an important means for a proper education and for maintaining a stable society. It was recognised as an art form that exerted great power over human beings and over the cultivation of one's ethos, or human disposition.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that music mirrors the state of one's soul and that listening to the wrong music could warp a person's character. Therefore, education was said to include proper styles of musical melody and modes, or scales, to develop desirable characters in students.
The Greeks believed that the body and soul are governed by the same laws as music and the cosmos. They developed a complex system of relationships between certain musical modes and particular emotional and spiritual characteristics. It was thus believed that one could be relieved from pain and disease through music. In one example, Pythagoras, a mathematician and philosopher, was said to have cured a youth of drunkenness by prescribing a musical melody in a particular mode and rhythm.
There are no musical recordings and as few as 20 examples of music notated during the later years of the ancient civilisation have been found. However, much is known of the music of Ancient Greece through literary references and historical documents.
In 1992, from excavations at the foot of Mount Olympus in Greece, ancient remains were found of the first musical keyboard instrument and ancestor of the church organ, the hydraulis. The simple, yet ingenious, design is an example of the high level of technological thought of the time, using water to generate the flow of air through brass pipes of varying lengths. The music produced was thought to be so beautiful that it became the favourite instrument of the ruling class and pictures of the hydraulis were even engraved on coins.
By detailed study of ancient sources, a working hydraulis was constructed in 1999 with support from the Greek Ministry of Culture. Its flowing pan pipe-like sound is accompanied with the soft rhythmic movement of the working mechanisms.
Inseparable from myths and gods, the music of Ancient Greece maintained a surrounding influence over philosophy, culture, healing and ethics, and of course much enjoyment and merriment.
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