Abstract

In the second book of the De Musica, Aristides Quintilianus discourses at length on the educational value of music, drawing on many earlier sources, Pythagorean, Damonian, and of course Plato and Aristotle. In ch. 6 Plato's censorious views in the Republic are particularly referred to, but, like Aristotle in the eighth book of his Politics, Aristides takes a less severe attitude towards the pleasure-giving content of melody on appropriate occasions, and points to the natural human taste for such music: τ⋯ς δ ϕὺσεως κα τ τοιατα παιτοσης, μποδίζειν μν δνατον, τν δ νσεων τν ὠϕλιμον προκριτον.