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The precise nature of the aulos mouthpiece, especially in the Classical period and before, has been disputed: above all, was it a single or a double reed? A definitive answer to this question has the greatest consequences for the nature of aulos music regarding not only timbre but more importantly control of dynamics, phrasing, and microtonal adjustments. From a survey of iconographical, literary and archaeological evidence, it is argued that the instruments of higher cultural esteem were universally equipped with double reeds. Single reeds were known as well, but are almost completely eclipsed in our sources.

References to music in poetry often play a genre-defining role. This is the case in Propertius 2.7 and Ovid Heroides 12, which employ the tibia and tuba in the topos of a mournful wedding. While the pipes belong to the motivic repertoire of elegy, where they usually occur in plaintive contexts, the introduction of the funeral trumpet to an elegiac motif is an innovation, reflecting traditional uses of the instrument during burial rituals. The wedding tibia is also represented in its authentic performative context, but the joyous character of its tunes is rendered more sorrowful than funeral music, and thus in keeping with conventional portrayals of the instrument in elegy. On the other hand, the representation of the tuba in this motif stands in opposition to other literary depictions, which usually place the clamorous sound and military, rather than funerary, uses of the instrument in the foreground. In consequence of this thematic innovation, the funeral trumpet not only becomes part of a mournful wedding topos but also a ‘genre-appropriate’ instrument in elegy.

Athenian elites of the late fifth century BC rebelled against aulos-playing as part of the school curriculum and launched a socio-cultural campaign against the instrument. Echoes of this ‘anti-aulos’ crusade reverberated in literature in the centuries to follow as motifs of hostility towards aulos music. Ovid (Fasti 6.657-710) and Propertius (2.30b) engage in this discourse, largely disregarding the motives of the Athenians for spurning the instrument; instead they embed the rejection myths in their poetical programmes in the context of their precarious relationship with Augustan authority. This paper argues that while both poets oppose the rejection of the doublepipes, they do so for entirely different reasons. Although the negative image of the aulos is present in Latin literary sources, it is largely disconnected from the substantial role of the instrument in Roman musical culture.

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