a celebrated Greek poet and musician. The Oxford marbles record that he was the son of Dardanus of Lesbos, and that he flourished in the 381st year of these records; which nearly answers to the 27th Olympiad, and 671st year before Christ. The marbles likewise inform us that he taught the nomos, 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 affirm that he added three strings to the lyre, which before his time had but four. Among the many signal services which Terpander is said to have rendered 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 fully two centuries after Terpander. But Plutarch, from Heraclides of Pontus, assures

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1 See a very elegant volume entitled "Gabrielle Faérmus Cremoneensis Fabulae centum, ex antiquis auctorisbus selectae carminibusque ex-plicatae, et ejusdem Carmina varia." Parma, 1793, 4to. us that Terpander, the inventor of nomes for the cithara, in hexameter verse, set them to music, as well as the verses of Homer, in order to sing them at the public games. Clemens Alexandrinus, in telling us that this musician wrote the laws 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. Of the works of this poet only a few fragments now remain.