It’s played by strumming the strings with a pick (rather than plucking them like on a harp). The lyre is a stringed instrument that’s like a small harp, and along with the aulos (pipes), it was the most common musical instrument of Ancient Greece. The hymn merged into a wild drinking song one of the islanders had learnt among the people of the mountains to the north, before moving on to a song of Lesbos, where the poet Sappho had lived, until, finally, it became a martial chorus of the Spartans, which all the islanders joined in until it seemed as if the whole of Helios was echoing with song. One after the other, a handful of men borrowed the lyre and sang. There’s a procession to Mount Helios, with everyone dressed in costume, and then feasting and dancing to music:Īt that moment, somewhere beyond the bonfire, a young islander took up a lyre and began to sing a hymn to the volcano that towered menacingly over their island yet also protected the people from outside invasion – after all, the lyrics went, who would want to conquer a land that was threatened to be burned to ashes at any moment? Here is one of my favourite musical scenes in the book, which occurs during the Epiklisi festival, when the islanders of Helios invoke the volcano, Typhoeus, to protect the island. If I could create a ‘booktrack’ for my new novel Aphrodite’s Tears (a musical soundtrack to which you listen while reading), it would feature prominently one instrument: the lyre.
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