Archestratus was a harmonic theorist in the Peripatetic tradition and probably lived in the early 3rd century BC. Little is known of his life and career. Athenaeus

Athenaeus

Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...

' reference (XIV.634d) to an Archestratus who wrote On auletes

Aulos

An aulos or tibia was an ancient Greek wind instrument, depicted often in art and also attested by archaeology.An aulete was the musician who performed on an aulos...

(Περὶ αὐλητῶν) in two books is perhaps to him; it is a "rather remote" possibility that he is identical with Archestratus of Syracuse

Archestratus

Archestratus was an Ancient Greek poet of Gela or Syracuse, in Sicily, who wrote some time in the mid 4th century BCE. His humorous didactic poem Hedypatheia , written in hexameters, advises a gastronomic reader on where to find the best food in the Mediterranean world...

.

Harmonic theory

The most substantial evidence for Archestratus' ideas is in a passage of Porphyry

Porphyry (philosopher)

Porphyry of Tyre , Porphyrios, AD 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics...

's commentary on Ptolemy's Harmonics, pp. 26–27 Düring:

The pyknon is a structure located within a tetrachord

Tetrachord

Traditionally, a tetrachord is a series of three intervals filling in the interval of a perfect fourth, a 4:3 frequency proportion. In modern usage a tetrachord is any four-note segment of a scale or tone row. The term tetrachord derives from ancient Greek music theory...

. Despite the forbiddingly technical and "arid" appearance of the doctrines ascribed to Archestratus, Andrew Barker has argued that in fact "they engage with issues of real significance to musicians, and to anyone seeking to understand the resources and strategies of melodic composition."

Connections with philosophy

The final section of the passage cited from Porphyry suggests that Archestratus was interested in philosophical topics including definition

Definition

A definition is a passage that explains the meaning of a term , or a type of thing. The term to be defined is the definiendum. A term may have many different senses or meanings...

, matter and form and "the relative importance of the faculties of sense-perception and reason in musical analysis," a topic that had been debated by Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

 (Rep. 530c-531c) and Aristoxenus

Aristoxenus

Aristoxenus of Tarentum was a Greek Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been lost, but one musical treatise, Elements of Harmony, survives incomplete, as well as some fragments concerning rhythm and...

 (with whom Archestratus seems to have been in broad sympathy).

Archestratus' claim that his work "had substantial connections with philosophy" earned him a vicious attack in Philodemus

Philodemus

Philodemus of Gadara was an Epicurean philosopher and poet. He studied under Zeno of Sidon in Athens, before moving to Rome, and then to Herculaneum. He was once known chiefly for his poetry preserved in the Greek anthology, but since the 18th century, many writings of his have been discovered...

' De musica, since Diogenes of Babylon, Philodemus' chief antagonist in that work, had used Archestratus' ideas in support of his own. Philodemus' report is as follows (De musica, Book 4 col. 137.13-27 in the Budé edition

Collection Budé

The Collection Budé, or the Collection des Universités de France, is a series of books comprising the Greek and Latin classics up to the middle of the 6th century...

 of D. Delattre = pp. 91–2 Kemke):

Archestratus may have hoped to show that specialized sciences such as harmonics were entitled to the serious attention of philosophers in general, but the schools of Hellenistic philosophy

Hellenistic philosophy

Hellenistic philosophy is the period of Western philosophy that was developed in the Hellenistic civilization following Aristotle and ending with the beginning of Neoplatonism.-Pythagoreanism:...

were largely immune to this suggestion.