book called his Doubts that his wise man ought to be a lover of
public spectacles and to delight above any other man in the music
and shows of the Bacchanals; and yet he will not admit of music
problems or of the critical inquiries of philologists, no, not so
much as at a compotation. Yea, he advises such princes as are
lovers of the Muses rather to entertain themselves at their feasts
either with some narration of military adventures or with the
importune scurrilities of drolls and buffoons, than to engage in
disputes about music or in questions of poetry. For this very
thing he had the face to write in his treatise of Monarchy, as if
he were writing to Sardanapalus, or to Nanarus ruler of Babylon.
For neither would a Hiero nor an Attalus nor an Archelaus be
persuaded to make a Euripides, a Simonides, a Melanippides, a
Crates, or a Diodotus rise up from their tables, and to place such
scaramuchios in their rooms as a Cardax, an Agrias, or a Callias,
or fellows like Thrasonides and Thrasyleon, to make people disorder
the house with hollowing and clapping. Had the great Ptolemy, who
was the first that formed a consort of musicians, but met with
these excellent and royal admonitions, would he not, think you,
have thus addressed himself to the Samians:--

O Muse, whence art thou thus maligned?

For certainly it can never belong to any Athenian to be in such
enmity and hostility with the Muses. But

No animal accurst by Jove
Music's sweet charms can ever love.
(Pindar, "Pythian," i. 25.)