We have now reviewed virtually all the significant data we have about Aristoxenus' predecessors in the empirical tradition, and have put in place the Aristotelian ideas about scientific method which form an essential background to his own work in harmonics. They will figure extensively in Chapters 6–8. Most of his surviving reflections on the subject are contained in the text we know as the Elementa harmonica. The present chapter is concerned mainly with the structure of this work as we now have it, and we shall tackle the much-debated question whether the whole of the surviving text originally belonged to the same treatise, and if it did not, how the relations between its parts are to be understood. These are issues which any serious student of Aristoxenus must address; but they are quite intricate and involved, and I cannot pretend that this chapter is easy reading. Some readers may prefer to cut to the chase, and after glancing at my preliminary paragraphs on Aristoxenus' life and writings, to jump to the discussion of the substance of his theories which begins in Chapter 6. If so I am happy to forgive them; they may perhaps be motivated to come back to the present chapter at a later stage.

ARISTOXENUS' LIFE AND WRITINGS

Aristoxenus was born in Taras, a Greek city in south-east Italy (Tarentum to the Romans, modern Taranto); the date of his birth is uncertain, but can be no later than about 365 bc.