title: A History of Greek Philosophy: Volume 1, The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans (Earlier Presocratics & the Pythagoreans)
author: W. K. C. Guthrie
description: A famous highly praised work is considered definitive by many scholars of classical philosophy. Socrates and the Sophists, which comprise Vol. 3 of the History, are available as two separate paperbacks, with text, bibliographies and indices amended so that each is self-contained.
zlib_text: Jeremiah Goyette 
  TH524 
  First Quarter Diary 
   
  I. Ancient Greek Music Theory 
  Although the sources for what we now call Greek music theory is sparse, with the 
  earliest extant sources being pieces of works by Aristoxenus, the story begins with the 
  Pythagoreans, starting in the 6th-century BCE.1 Mathiesen identifies three intellectual traditions 
  of Greek music theory: the Pythagoreans, the Harmonicists, and the Aristoxenians.2 There is 
  however, as Mathiesen argues, much overlap between these traditions, especially in the later 
  Roman authors; in fact, many of the innovations of Aristoxenus seem to derive from the 
  Harmonicists. 
  The Pythagorean tradition first appears in the Division of the Canon (often attributed to 
  Euclid), and later in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Nicomachus, Thoen of Smyrna, Ptolemy, and 
  Aristides Quintilianus. In general, the tradition was concerned with quantizing the elements of 
  nature, arguing that the essence of nature lies in abstract truths that can 