Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Symphonia

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

SYMPHO'NIA (συμφωνία). The harmony of many voices or instruments concerted together, as contradistinguished from cantus, the melody of a single voice or instrument. Cic. Cael. 15.

2. (ῥοπτρόν βυρσοπαγές). A long drum, or barrel drum, made by a hollow cylinder of wood or copper, with a skin strained over both its ends, and beaten by a pair of drum-sticks (virgulae) on both sides at once. (Isidor. Orig. iii. 21. 14.) It was used as a military instrument by the Egyptians (Prudent. adv. Symm. ii. 527.); and by the Parthians (Plut. Crass. 23.); but not by the Greeks or Romans, though it appears upon a bas-relief published by Licetus (De gemmis anulorum), slung round the drummer's neck by a broad belt, in the same position as it is borne by the figure on the left side of the illustration (Symphonia/2.1), which is copied from an Egyptian painting. The right-hand figure exhibits a copper drum, also Egyptian, from an original found at Thebes; and the bottom one, a wooden drum-stick, from the same country, now preserved in the museum at Berlin. The marks on the sides of the drums, along and across their barrels, show the cords which braced up the skins. The knob at the end of the drum-stick is formed for being covered with leather wadded underneath; and the shape of the handle distinctly proves that it was to be used as one of a pair intended for striking a drum placed in a horizontal position, similar to the one carried by the figure immediately above it. Burney expresses an opinion that a drum of the kind described was not an ancient invention (Hist. of Music, i. 116.), mainly induced by not having met with any representation of it in works of art; but the example of Licetus was not known to him, and those engraved above had not been discovered when he wrote. Scholars, moreover, and lexicographers, are inclined to regard the term symphonia as one of doubtful Latinity, in the sense here ascribed to it, because it is thought that the language affords no positive authority for the usage of an earlier period than that of Prudentius and Isidorus. Celsus, however (iii. 18.), applies the term most distinctly to some musical instrument in conjunction with cymbals, and intended to make a very great noise, for which none more appropriate than the drum could be suggested; and the word would bear a similar interpretation in a passage of Pliny (H. N. ix. 8.), where it is united with the hydraulic organ; though in that instance a different interpretation may be preferable. At all events, it is certain, from the specimens introduced above, that the barrel drum was used in very early times by the Egyptians, and, in consequence, that it could not have been unknown to the Romans, who would naturally invent or adopt some name, by which to distinguish it. If, in pure Latinity, that name was not symphonia, how was it called? Assuredly not tympanum; for that word expresses an object of very different form, though somewhat allied in character, as is clearly and accurately distinguished by Isidorus, who says that the tympanum had its skin only strained over one face (Orig. iii. 21. 10. corium ex una parte extentum), but the symphonia over two surfaces (Orig. iii. 21. 14. ex utraque parte pelle extenta).

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  Symphonia/2.1