- Nina Almazova (St. Petersburg)
A piece of instrumental music: harmateios nomos
Evidence for auletic harmateios nomos is limited to three passages: Ps.-Plut. De mus. 1133E–F; Plut. De Alex. fort. aut virt. 335A, and also Eur. Or. 1384 (harmateion melos), which the scholia interpret in eight different ways. Identification with any other nomoi is not certain enough to build on this ground.
Pseudo-Plutarch is not much informative. In Plutarch, the name of nomos is probably erroneous. The verse of Euripides (considered authentic) dates back to the time when nomoi were still performed, so it is decisive for the discussion: it implies that harmateios nomos was primarily known as mournful music.
Therefore it cannot be a piece for mating horses (pace schol.) or an epinikion celebrating a victory in a chariot-race (pace Christ). Rather it could be connected with cult, either because of some practical use of a chariot, or because a chariot appeared in a certain myth. Only war-chariots or racing-chariots are considered, for the word harma is not applied to other vehicles in the VIII–IV cent. BC.
An aulete could hardly be able to play while riding a chariot at a festival (pace Ulrici). A wedding procession does not correspond to the context required by Euripides (pace schol.). At a burial, a chariot could not be used as a hearse (pace Gertsman), and other ways of using it (for processions or races) are not restricted to the funerals, so there is no reason to call funerary music harmateios nomos.
As for a myth, one could think of the Mother of Gods (schol.), for she rides a lion-drawn chariot and there are stories of her mourning, but the mourning ends with a revel, and both are accompanied by specifically noisy and ecstatic music, so a nomos for the Mother is not likely to be a model of musical mourning. Besides, harmateios nomos and metroia of Olympos are mentioned separately in the same work of Pseudo-Plutarch.
It is hardly possible to decide what exactly the subject of harmateios nomos was: for example it could be the duel of Achilles and Hector (schol.). A chariot was not necessarily an important item. The examples of pythikos and polykephalos nomos show that the most impressive element of instrumental program music was the onomatopoetic imitation of certain sounds, such as the hissing of snakes on the gorgons’ heads (which is not relevant for Perseus’ story). The sounds of a chariot are referred to in the fifth-century poetry; they were familiar to the audience and could be imitated.
The scholia propose two means of depicting a chariot: high pitch and swift tempo. One can think of more suppositions on pitch, mode, rhythm, etc.; however the nomos could consist of several parts with varying parameters. Aristoph. Eq. 8–10 seems to provide some ground for a hypothesis that harmateios nomos was performed at the Panathenaia.