LIFE OF THALETAS or THALES

s best ascribed to Thaletas of Gortyn, Xenodamus

Xenocritus . . .. Polymnastus . . ., and
Sacadas. For we are told that the Feast of Naked
Youths at Sparta! . . . was due to these musicians

: .. Thaletas, Xenodamus, and Xenocritus were
composers of Paeans.

Plutarch on Music: Many circumstances could be
om to show that good music has been a matter of con-
vern to the best-regulated states, and not least among
shese the quelling of a rising at Sparta by Terpander
_.. And according to Pratinas, Thaletas the Cretan
who is said to have been invited thither at the in-
stance of the Delphic oracle to heal the Spartans by
his music, rid their city of the plague which ravaged it.
The Same: As for Thaletas of Crete, it is doubted
whether he composed Paeans. Glaucus, who puts
nim later than Archilochus, declares that he imi-
vated that poet with the difference that his songs
- longer and he employed the Paeonic and
Cretie rhythms. These had not been used by
Archilochus, nor indeed by Orpheus or Terpander,
mit are said to have been derived by Thaletas, who
thus showed himself a great poet, from the flute-
nusic of Olympus.

Porphyrius Life of Pythagoras: He used to amuse
imself alone in his own house of a morning by
fnging certain ancient paeans of Thales to his own
hecompaniment on the lyre.

See also Plut. dg. 10, Princ. phil, 1, Strab. 10, 182,
Philod. Mus. xis.

- 1 of. Ath. 15. 678 b (on Alem. p. 47)

1 Ritschl: mss μαρῶνα

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