Observations placeholder
Censorinus - De Die Natali
Identifier
003561
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Censorinus 3rd century AD – De Die Natali [editor Otto Jahn 1845]
Whether music is only in the voice, as Socrates says, or as Aristoxenus says, in the voice and the bodily motion, or whether as Theophrastus believes in both these and more especially in the movement of the soul, it certainly partakes strongly of the divine and has the greatest power to excite souls.
For if it were not agreeable to the immortal gods, who are composed of divine soul, stage plays would certainly not have been instituted for the purpose of pleasing them, nor a piper employed for all the services in sacred temples.
The triumph of Mars would not be celebrated with a piper, nor that of Apollo with the lyre, nor the Muses given pipes and other attributes of this kind. Neither would pipers, by whom the deities are appeased, be permitted to play publicly and feast on the Capitol, or to roam freely throughout the city at the lesser Quinquatria (on the Ides of June) clad in masks and intoxicated.