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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cithara

Cithara \Cith"a*ra\, n. [L. Cf. Cittern, Guitar.] (Mus.) An ancient stringed musical instrument resembling the harp.

Wiktionary
cithara

alt. (context musici English) An ancient Greek stringed instrument, which could be considered a forerunner of the guitar. n. (context musici English) An ancient Greek stringed instrument, which could be considered a forerunner of the guitar.

Wikipedia
Cithara

The cithara or kithara was an ancient Greek musical instrument in the lyre or lyra family. In modern Greek the word kithara has come to mean " guitar" (a word whose origins are found in kithara).

The kithara was a professional version of the two-stringed lyre. As opposed to the simpler lyre, which was a folk-instrument, the kithara was primarily used by professional musicians, called kitharodes. The kithara's origins are likely Asiatic. The barbiton was a bass version of the kithara popular in the eastern Aegean and ancient Asia Minor.

Usage examples of "cithara".

There was no part-singing in Greece, but merely a singing, or rather chanting, of national and patriotic songs in unison, accompanied by the cithara, the national instrument.

All the dialogue was delivered in a musical voice, and, it is thought, all accompanied by the cithara, which every player carried in his hand.

Previous to the time of Socrates, orators in addressing popular assemblies, lawyers in pleading cases, and all public speakers, appear to have made use of the cithara as a sort of accompaniment, if for no other purpose than to assure themselves of securing a proper pitch of the voice.

The later form was the so-called cithara, the most common shape of which is that made familiar to all by the pedal piece of the square pianoforte.

The flute or aulos does not seem to have been used in connection with the cithara at all, and the Greeks had nothing corresponding to what we call an orchestra.

To reason is like playing the cithara for the sake of achieving the art, like practising with a view to mastery, like any learning that aims at knowing.

Nero, who had been giving a recital when he was alerted, had not even had time to change from his costume as a cithara player.

No, as a parting favor, I shall reveal only your master atrocity, which is this: that you have the brazen effrontery to imagine that your throaty warble should be called singing, and that your caterwauling on the lyre and your sins on the cithara pass, in any sense, for art.

By Venus, while yet young, we can cover our full locks with chaplets--while yet the cithara sounds on unsated ears--while yet the smile of Lydia or of Chloe flashes over our veins in which the blood runs so swiftly, so long shall we find delight in the sunny air, and make bald time itself but the treasurer of our joys.

Besides her skill in the garlands, she sings and plays on the cithara, which also brings money, and lately--but that is a secret.

Now, in the fall of 66, he set sail with a great chorus of Augustiani and a virtual army of entertainment laden with lyres, citharas, masks, costumes, and buskins.

They played a mixture of instruments from Britain and the Continent, bone flutes and panpipes, harps and citharas and tibias, and their bright music drifted like smoke on the still air.

Nero traveled to Greece, and performed on the cithara at the Olympian and Isthmian games.

Some led small children by the hand, others followed with musical instruments: citharas, tabrets, timbrels, harps, dulcimers and cymbals.

Thus was an island plundered in perpetuity, an island whose celebrated musician Melampus had won the prize for Cithara at the Olympic Games as long ago as 582BC.