The disease having,
probably, reached its highest pitch of malignity when the musician
arrived, must afterwards have become less contagious by degrees; till,
at length, ceasing of itself, by the air wafting away the seeds of
infection, and recovering its former purity, the extirpation of the
disease was attributed by the people to the music of Thaletas, who had
been thought the sole mediator, to whom they owed their happy
deliverance.
This is exactly what Plutarch means, who tells the story; and what Homer
meant, in attributing the curation of the plague among the Greeks, at
the siege of Troy, to music:
With hymns divine the joyous banquet ends,
The Poeans lengthen'd till the sun descends:
The Greeks restor'd, the grateful notes prolong;
Apollo listens and approves the song.[120]
For the poet in these lines seems only to say, that Apollo was rendered
favourable, and had delivered the Greeks from the scourge with which
they were attacked, in consequence of Chriseis having been restored to
her father, and of sacrifices and offerings.
M.
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