Echoes of the Rejection of the Aulos in Augustan Poetry

Athenian elites of the late fifth century BC rebelled against aulos-playing as part of the school curriculum and launched a socio-cultural campaign against the instrument. Echoes of this ‘anti-aulos’ crusade reverberated in literature in the centuries to follow as motifs of hostility towards aulos music. Ovid (Fasti 6.657-710) and Propertius (2.30b) engage in this discourse, largely disregarding the motives of the Athenians for spurning the instrument; instead they embed the rejection myths in their poetical programmes in the context of their precarious relationship with Augustan authority. This paper argues that while both poets oppose the rejection of the doublepipes, they do so for entirely different reasons. Although the negative image of the aulos is present in Latin literary sources, it is largely disconnected from the substantial role of the instrument in Roman musical culture.