LYRE, a musical instrument of the stringed kind, much used by the ancients. Concerning the number of strings with which this instrument was furnished, there has been great controversy. Some assert that it had only three; that the sounds of the two remote were acute, and that of the intermediate one a mean between these two extremes; and that Mercury, the inventor, compared these three chords ^o as many seasons of the year, which were all that the 3reeks reckoned, namely, summer, winter, and spring, assigning the acute to the first, the grave to the second, and the mean to the third. Others assert that the lyre had four strings; that the interval between the first and the fourth was an octave; that the second was a fourth from the first, and the fourth the same distance from the third, and that from the second to the third was a tone. An- 3ther class of writers contend that the lyre of Mercury ⅛ad seven strings. Nicoachus, a follower of Pythagoras, and the chief of them, gives the following account of the matter: “The lyre made of the shell was invented by Mercury; and the knowledge of it, as it was constructed by him of seven strings, was transmitted to. Orpheus; Orpheus taught the use of it to Thamyris and Linus; the latter of whom taught it to Hercules, who communicated it to Amphion the Theban, who built the seven gates of Thebes to the seven strings of the lyre.” The same author proceeds to relate, “that Orpheus was afterwards killed by the Thracian women; that they are reported to have cast his lyre into the sea, which was afterwards thrown up at Antissa, a city of Lesbos; that certain fishers finding it, brought it to Terpander, who carried it into Egypt, exquisitely improved, and, showing it to the Egyptian priests, assumed to himself the honour of its invention.” This difference amongst authors seems to have arisen from their confounding together the Egyptian Thoth or Hermes, and the Greek Mercury. The invention of the primitive lyre with three strings was due to Hermes the Egyptian. The lyre attributed to the Greek Mercury is described by 1 umost all the poets as an instrument of seven strings. Vincenzio Galilei has collected the various opinions of the Greek writers who have mentioned the invention of the chelys or testudο ; and Mr Spence did the same thing in a very circumstantial but ludicrous manner. “Horace talks of Mercury as a wonderful musician, and represents him with a lyre. There is a ridiculous old legend relating to this invention, which informs us, that Mercury, after stealing some bulls from Apollo, retired to a secret grotto which he used to frequent, at the foot of a mountain in Arcadia. Just as he was going in, he found a tortoise feeding at the entrance of his cave; he killed the poor creature, and perhaps ate the flesh of it. As he was diverting himself with the shell, he was mightily pleased with the noise it gave from its concave figure. He had possibly been cunning enough to find out, that a thong pulled strait and fastened at each end, when struck with the finger, made a sort of musical sound. However that was, he went immediately to work, and cut several thongs out of the hides he had lately stolen, and fastened them as tight as he could to the shell of this tortoise; and, in playing with them, made a new kind of music with them, to divert himself in his retreat.” This, considered only as an account of the first invention of the lyre, is not altogether unnatural. The most ancient representations of this instrument agree very well with the account of its invention. The lyre in particular on the old celestial globes was represented as made of one entire shell of a tortoise; and that of Amphion in the celebrated group of the Dirce or Toro, in the Farnese palace at Rome, which is of Greek sculpture, and very high antiquity, is figured in the same manner. There have, however, been many other claimants to the invention of the seven-stringed lyre. For though Mercury invented this instrument in the manner already related, it is said he afterwards gave it to Apollo, who was the first that played upon it with method, and made it the constant companion of poetry. According to Homer’s account of this transaction, in his hymn to Mercury, it was given by that god to Apollo, as a peace-offering and indemnification for the oxen which Mercury had stolen from him. Diodorus informs us, that Apollo soon repenting of the cruelty with which he had treated Marsyas in consequence of their musical contest, broke the strings of the lyre, and by that means put a stop for a time to any further progress in the practice of the new instrument. “The Muses,” adds he, “afterwards added to this instrument the string called mese ; Linus, that of lichanos ; and Orpheus and Thamyris, those strings which are named hypate and pατhypate. Again, many ancient and ere-dible[7:13:614] authors inform us, that, before the time of Terpander, the Grecian lyre had only four strings; and, if we may believe Suidas, it remained in this state 856 years, from the time of Amphion, until Terpander added to it three new strings, which extended the musical scale to a heptachord, or seventh, and supplied the player with two conjoint tetrachords. It was about 150 years after this period, that Pythagoras is said to have added an eighth string to the lyre, in order to complete the octave, which consisted of two disjoint tetrachords. But Boetius gives a different history of the scale, and informs us, that the system did not long remain in such narrow limits as a tetrachord. Choraebus, the son of Athis, or Atys, king of Lydia, added a fifth string; Hyagnis, a sixth; Terpander, a seventh; and at length Lychaon of Samos, an eighth. But all these accounts are irreconcileable with Homer’s hymn to Mercury, where the chelys or testudo, the invention of which he ascribes to that god, is said to have had seven strings. There are many claimants amongst the musicians of ancient Greece to the strings afterwards added to these, by which the scale, in the time of Aristoxenus, was extended to two octaves. Athenaeus more than once speaks of the nine-stringed instrument; and Ion of Chios, a tragic and lyric poet and a philosopher, who first recited his pieces in the eighty-second Olympiad, 452 b. c. mentions, in some verses quoted by Euclid, the ten-stringed lyre; a proof that the third conjoint tetrachord was added to the scale in his time, which was about fifty years after Pythagoras is supposed to have constructed the octachord. The different claimants amongst the Greeks to the same musical discoveries, only prove that music was cultivated in different countries, and that the inhabitants of each country invented and improved their own instruments; some of which happening to resemble those of other parts of Greece, rendered it difficult for historians to avoid attributing the same invention to different persons. Thus the single flute was ascribed to Minerva and to Marsyas; the syrinx or fistula, to Pan and to Cybele; and the lyrc or cithara, to Mercury, Apollo, Amphion, Linus, and Orpheus. Indeed, the mere addition of a string or two to an instrument without a neck was so obvious and easy, that it is scarcely possible not to conceive that many people may have done it at the same time.