The crisp, bright sound of a stringed musical instrument that exists only in the artwork and lore of ancient Greece has finally been heard again – thanks to the number-crunching power of latter-day computer networks.
Francesco de Mattia and colleagues at the Conservatory of Music in Salerno, Italy, wondered what an instrument introduced to Greece by a musician called Epigonus in AD 180 might have sounded like. No complete examples of the instrument – eponymously dubbed the epigonion – survive, but it’s known to have had 50 strings, like a harp. It also had a soundboard, like a guitar, but was…
