The aulos is a reed instrument. Vase paintings show a pair of pipes, each with a reed, held apart by the player’s hands and often supported by a leather strap across the cheeks, the phorbeia. The Roman word is tibia. Both names get translated as “flute” often enough that the translation has become a habit. It is a bad habit. A flute has no reed. The aulos does, and the sound sits closer to a shawm or a bagpipe chanter than to a recorder.
It was a professional instrument. Players accompanied tragedy and comedy, some sacrifices, and symposia. In Plato’s Republic it is the wind instrument the ideal city sends away, while the lyre and the cithara remain. The objection is social and ethical as much as acoustic: the aulos belongs to the theatre and to a kind of excitement the dialogue distrusts.
This entry is the catalogue version of that argument. A photograph belongs in the frame above. A recording belongs in the player below. Both are plugs until a real image and a real take replace them.
Recording
A recording belongs here. Add an audio URL on the instrument, and the player will take this slot.