The music, the instruments, the dance

There is no shortage of material when researching the music of the Roman world but the references available are more concerned with the instrument used rather than the music. Fortunately, some finds have survived, as have and many depictions of wind instruments, percussion, strings and hydraulic or bellows organs.

This material has allowed us, together with the study of theoretical treatises and the descriptions of Latin writers, to reconstruct a good part of the instruments in use at the time, giving us the opportunity to listen to their sound and instrumental combinations. Some instruments are still in use unchanged in various regions of the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East, evidence of artistic and cultural exchange that continues today as it did then. Dozens of mosaics, ceramics and frescoes depict images of dances in which male and female dancers twirl and move in suggestive positions.

When dancing they often use small percussion instruments such as cymbals or crotales and are almost always accompanied by instrumentalists.

The study of the sources and the large number of images has allowed us to reconstruct, through the superposition of positions taken from the images in sequence, possible and plausible choreographies.