Le due musiche di Polibio (4. 20. 4), di Filosseno di Citera (Antiphanes, fr. 207 K.-A.), di Diogene di Babilonia (SVF III, frr. 59 e 60)

In the digression proudly devoted by Polybius to «ancient» Arcadian musical paideia (4. 20-21), the words τὴν γ᾽ ἀληθῶς μουσικήν (4. 20. 4) have been often interpreted as «music in a narrow sense«, opposed to μουσική as studia humanitatis (Walbank). But other passages in Polybius (and Plato) show the clearly polemical use of the attributive ἀληθῶς: so «true music» is «(good) music which is really music» (i.e. respectful of the alleged tradition and useful to paideia), contrasted to the today so-called ‘new music’, implicitly labelled as ‘false music’, since it is devoided of educational and aesthetical value. This is confirmed by the occurrence of the same expression in Antiphanes fr. 207 K.-A. (in a polemical comparison between two musical trends), and by several texts (late 5th century κωμικοί; Plato and Aristoxenus; writers of Hellenistic and Imperial ages) where the ‘new music’ is condamned as something ‘spurious’, or something which ‘destroys’ or even ‘kills’ the (real) music. This sharp (however ideological) opposition between ‘two musics’ (the traditional one and the pervert θεατρική music) can be founded also in the Περὶ μουσικῆς by Diogenes of Babylon, who, very probably, Polybius met during the Athenian embassy to Rome in 155 B.C. and whose political ideas are similar to the Polybian ones: in 4. 20. 4 Polybius could have been inspired, among others, by Diogenes. In this respect, it is amazing that Polybius writes, after few lines (20. 9), that Arcadian youth learned νόμοι composed by Timotheos and Philoxenos without noticing that these two composers were considered (still in Roman imperial age) the champions of what he could have defined ‘false music’: this could be explained considering how little attention is paid by Polybius to music, aside from the Arcadian digression which is moved only by a patriotic and political aim.