FISTULA, in the ancient music, a wind instrument resembling our flute or flageolet.
The principal wind instruments of the ancients were the tibia and the fistula. But how they were constituted, in what they differed, or how they were played upon, does not appear; indeed all that we know is, that the fistula was at first made of reeds, and afterwards of other matters. Some had holes, others none; some again were single pipes, others a combination of these; as, for instance, the syringa of Pan.