a celebrated Greek poet and musician. The Oxford marbles tell us that he was the son of Derdenus of Lesbos, and that he flourished in the 381st year of these records; which nearly answers to the 27th Olympiad, and 671st year B. C. The marbles inform us likewise, that he taught the nomen, or airs, of the lyre and flute, which he performed himself upon this last instrument, in concert with other players on the flute. Several writers tell us that he added three strings to the lyre, which before his time had but four; and in confirmation of this, Euclid and Strabo quote two verses, which they attribute to Terpander himself.

The tetrachord's restraint we now despise, The seven-string'd lyre a nobler strain supplies.

Among the many signal services which Terpander is said to have done to music, none was of more importance than the notation that is ascribed to him for ascertaining and preserving melody, which before was traditional, and wholly dependent on memory. The invention, indeed, of musical characters has been attributed by Alypius and Gaudentius, two Greek writers on music, and upon their authority by Boethius, to Pythagoras, who flourished full two centuries after Terpander. But Plutarch, from Heracleides of Pontus, assures us that Terpander, the inventor of nomes for the cithara, in hexameter