As usual, Cicero is illuminating: “a life without music is like a body without its soul.” There’s an undeniable truth in his words the people of his motherland, glorious Rome, always kept in mind. Indeed, the Romans loved music and if they didn’t give to it the same ethical and didactic value the Greeks did, they certainly recognized to it immense virtues. Sources tell us Romans’ lives were filled with music, just as ours are today: they had music during weddings and funerals, parties and holy rituals, theatre representations and even during battle.
Yet, music is ethereal and, without standardized ways to write it, the melodies of Rome went, like the buzz of her streets and the heady scents of her matrons. But Rome left us literature, visual and performing art, technology, she left us the very blueprint of how our society works: in each and every one of these aspects Roman music survived.
