[297] TERRA.

under hexameter verse, set them to music, as well as the verses of Homer, in order to sing them at the public games: And Clemens Alexandrinus, in telling us that this musician wrote the lays of Lycurgus in verse, and set them to music, makes use of the same expression as Plutarch; which seems clearly to imply a written melody.

After enumerating the airs which Terpander had composed and to which he had given names, Plutarch continues to speak of his other compositions; among which he describes the proems, or hymns for the cithara, in heroic verse. These were used in after-times by the rhapsodists, as prologues or introductions to the poems of Homer and other ancient writers. But Terpander rendered his name illustrious, no less by his performances upon the flute and cithara than by his compositions. This appears by the marbles already mentioned; by a passage in Athenaeus, from Hellanicus, which informs us that he obtained the first prize in the musical contests at the Carnean games; and by the testimony of Plutarch, who says, that "no other proof need be urged of the excellence of Terpander in the art of playing upon the cithara, than the register of the Pythic games, from which it appears that he gained four prizes successively at those solemnities. Of the works of this poet only a few fragments now remain.