I flauti etruschi: Tra mito, immaginario e archeologia dall'Arcadia a Picasso

Ancient Roman music refers to the musical practices of the Roman Republic and Empire, roughly from the early centuries BCE through Late Antiquity. It was largely monophonic and orally transmitted, used in civic ritual, theater, private banquets, military life, and religious cults. Its core sound world combined Greco-Roman string and wind instruments (cithara, lyre, tibia/aulos) with percussion (tympanum, cymbala, crotala, sistrum) and powerful brass (tuba, cornu, bucina). The hydraulis (water organ) added a distinctive timbre to spectacles. Rhythm often followed poetic meters, and performance likely favored heterophonic textures and ornamented melodic lines over harmonic progressions. Rather than a single unified style, Roman music was a mosaic: theatrical and dance music for the ludi, refined kithara- and lyre-centered song for elite salons, processional and cultic soundscapes (including Egyptian-Isiac elements), and martial brass for command and ceremony.