Idiophones
European antiquity knew many idiophones. Dancers’ clappers, held pairwise in the hands of maenads (female participants in Dionysian rites) and other female dancers, often stressed the rhythm of accompanying auloi (the ancient Greek reed pipes). The time-beating foot clappers of chorus leaders, attached to the right foot like a sandal, were known in Greece as kroupezai, or kroupala, and were adopted by Rome as the scabella. Other idiophones included bells, cymbals, the unidentified ēcheion, and an instrument simply called “the bronze” (chalkos), probably a metal percussion disk. When the Egyptian cult of Isis spread to Greece and Rome, her sistrum followed, always in the hands of a priest or—rarely—priestess.
With the exception of clappers, all these instruments were of bronze; as such they were credited with the apotropaic powers (the special protective powers against evil) accorded this metal in the East. For example, both in various Asian islands and in Greece, it was customary to “sound the chalkos at eclipses of the Moon because it has power to purify and to drive off pollutions” (a scholiast, writing on Theocritus). According to the Roman poet Ovid, the annual visit of ghosts of the dead to their former homes was terminated by requests to depart emphasized by the clanging of a bronze plate. The thin bronze percussion disks were affixed to metal handles; one from Pompeii is even garnished with pellet bells. Small bronze bells, which made a clanging rather than ringing sound, warded off evil spirits, averted the evil eye, served as sentinels’ and watchmen’s signal instruments, or were attached to the handle of a Greek warrior’s shield in order to terrify the enemy by their clamour. Small bells were also frequently worn on anklets by jesters, dancers, and courtesans, particularly in Hellenistic times. In Rome, tintinnabulae (“bells”) served as signal instruments or were suspended from the necks of herd animals—again to ward off evil.
Deeply cupped cymbals, played together with a frame drum, were sounded in religious rites and at secular dances. Forked cymbals known as crotala traveled from Egypt to Greece and Rome, and finger cymbals were introduced from the East, chiefly for dancers, a pair being attached to the thumb and middle finger of each hand.
Among the oldest instruments, rattles originally combined the functions of prophylactic amulets and children’s toys, and both functions continued to coexist as late as Roman times.