(no subject)

[timelets]

Making music—genuine music, I mean—is beneficial for everyone, but for Arcadians it is a necessity. We should not regard music, as Ephorus* suggests in his preface, in an untypically hasty assertion, as a human invention designed merely to beguile and charm. Nor should we think that there was no thought involved when the ancient Cretans and Spartans replaced the trumpet, as their time-keeping instrument in war, with the pipes. Nor should we suppose that the earliest Arcadians had no good reason for incorporating music into Arcadian life so thoroughly that not only children, but also young men up to the age of thirty, are required to make it their constant companion, even though in all other respects their lives are very harsh.
...
It seems to me that the men of old who introduced these practices had a very good reason for doing so. They did not consider music a superfluous luxury. They bore in mind, first, that people in Arcadia work as peasant farmers, which is to say that life is a hard grind for them, and, second, that their characters tend towards dour- ness, as a consequence of the cold climate and dank conditions that usually obtain in those parts.
...
It was because they wanted to soften and temper the inflex- ibility and insensitivity of the Arcadian character that they intro- duced all these practices, and for the same reason they also instituted the custom, for both men and women, of shared public meetings and sacrificial festivals, of which there are very many in Arcadia, and also festivals at which girls and boys dance together. In short, the sole purpose for which they were striving was to introduce practices that tamed and mitigated Arcadian obduracy.

...if, god willing, things ever improve in Cynaethae, people there should tame themselves by acquiring an interest in culture, and especially musical culture.

--- Polybius, The Histories.