Aristides Quintilianus (

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

: Ἀριστείδης Κοϊντιλιανός) was the

author of an ancient

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

al treatise, ''Perì musikês'' (Περὶ Μουσικῆς, i.e. ''On Music'';

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

: ''De Musica'') According to Theodore Karp, his three-volume work on music "constitutes one of the principal sources of modern knowledge of ancient Greek music and its relationship to other disciplines". According to the 17th-century scholar

Marcus Meibomius Marcus Meibomius (c. 1630, Tönningen – 1710/1711, Utrecht) was a DanishOr possibly German, from Holstein. scholar. He is best known as a historian of music, as an antiquarian, and as the first librarian at the Denmark's Royal Library. He was ...

, in whose collection (''Antiq. Musicae Auc. Septem'', 52) this work was printed for the first time in 1652, it contains everything on music that is to be found in antiquity. The dates of Aristides are uncertain. In his book he refers to

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...

(d. 43 BC), and his work was used by

Martianus Capella Martianus Minneus Felix Capella (fl. c. 410–420) was a jurist, polymath and Latin prose writer of late antiquity, one of the earliest developers of the system of the seven liberal arts that structured early medieval education. He was a nati ...

(fl. 410-420). According to

Thomas J. Mathiesen Thomas James Mathiesen (born 30 April 1947) is an American musicologist, whose research focuses on Ancient music and the music theory of ancient and early music, early periods. A leading scholar of the Music of ancient Greece, music of Ancient G ...

, Aristides flourished in the late 3rd or early 4th century AD. One piece of evidence for Aristides' date, according to Winnington-Ingram, is that fact in the work he addresses two friends called Eusebius and Florentius; the latter name is unknown before AD 300. Book 1 of the work deals with the theory of music under the traditional headings of harmonics, rhythm, and metre. It depends heavily on

Aristoxenus Aristoxenus of Tarentum ( el, Ἀριστόξενος ὁ Ταραντῖνος; born 375, fl. 335 BC) was a Greek Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been ...

(4th century BC), but with some "intriguing additions", apparently from a source from the classical period.Winnington-Ingram (1984), p. 377. Book 2 (said by Winnington-Ingram to be "extremely interesting") discusses the importance of music in the education of the young and in the moral life of individuals. Book 3 discusses the arithmetic of music and explores from the point of view of Platonic philosophy the analogies between numbers in music and numbers in the physical world.

Notes

*Barker, Andrew (1982)
"Aristides Quintilianus and Constructions in Early Music Theory"
''The Classical Quarterly'' Vol. 32, No. 1 (1982), pp. 184-197. *Borthwick, E. Kerr (1985)
Review of "Aristides Quintilianus, On Music by Aristides Quintilianus and Thomas J. Mathiesen"
''The Classical Review'', New Series, Vol. 35, No. 2 (1985), pp. 258-259. *Feaver, Douglas D. (1984)
Review of: "Aristides Quintilianus: On Music in Three Books by Thomas J. Mathiesen"
''The Classical World'', Vol. 78, No. 1 (Sep.–Oct., 1984), pp. 61-62. *Wingell, Richard J. (1984)
Review of: "On Music, in Three Books by Aristides Quintilianus, Thomas J. Mathiesen"
''Notes'', Second Series, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Sep., 1984), pp. 45-47. *Winnington-Ingram, R.P. (1984)
Review of "On Music by Aristides Quintilianus and Thomas J. Mathiesen"
''Early Music History'', Vol. 4 (1984), pp. 375-380. Roman-era Greeks Ancient Greek music theorists {{Greece-bio-stub

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Further reading