The lyre player in Roman Malta

Abstract

All knowledge we have of music-making in the Roman period is based on literary or iconographic sources, and occasionally on extant musical instruments. Evidence shows that music was an integral .part of festivals, religious rituals, ceremonies, social occasions as well as military life and thus a very important part of a wide spectrum of Roman life. Roman culture was transported to each of the Empire's conquered lands, and one would expect the same to have happened sooner or later in Malta. Little is, in fact, known of musical life on the Maltese islands under Roman rule, a period spanning between 218B.C.and 535A.D. Large-scale theatres in which music would have played a major part, have not been discovered in Malta or in Gozo. However, this does not exclude the possibility of dramatic and musical performances taking place on the Islands either in some form of public theatre or in small private areas reserved for the purpose. We do find remains or iconographic evidence of various types of instruments, amongst them representatives of the string, wind and percussion type, indicating a local society with some degree of musical interest. This article concentrates on an archaeological find which sheds interesting light on one type of musical instrument which used to be heard in Roman Malta.