Plato, Aristotle and the phytagorean influence on Plutarch's De Musica

In his treatise On Music, Plutarch cites and discusses excerpts from works of Plato and Aristotle in which these authors deal with issues relevant to the harmonic theory. In these passages, we see that the sources used by Plutarch have a strong influence of the Pythagorean school, under which the st...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Roosevelt Rocha
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Sociedade Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos (SBEC) 2012-07-01
Series:Classica, Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos
Subjects:
Online Access:https://revista.classica.org.br/classica/article/view/84
Description
Summary:In his treatise On Music, Plutarch cites and discusses excerpts from works of Plato and Aristotle in which these authors deal with issues relevant to the harmonic theory. In these passages, we see that the sources used by Plutarch have a strong influence of the Pythagorean school, under which the study of musical scales was developed focusing on the mathematical relationships that exist between the notes and intervals. This indicates that Plutarch or not directly read the texts of Plato and Aristotle, or read, but using some other source, a commentator of Pythagorean extraction, who we can not identify.
ISSN:0103-4316
2176-6436