“The Spartans, who were best known among Greeks for marching to aulos (reed pipe) music, were believed to have received their musical tutelage from Lydia and Phrygia, and from the rites of the Mother of the Gods in particular, while violent elements of their warlike rituals in honor of Artemis Orthia were regarded as Lydian in nature. It follows, a fortiori, that the music of war performed by the Lydians themselves, as Herodotus describes it, had all of the cultic associations that the Greeks recalled when they traced the musical inspiration of the Spartans to its source. [AL: From the footnote.] Plutarch, in his Life of Lycurgus, describes the Spartans as “the most musical and at the same time most warlike,” and the aulos as the most warlike musical instrument. The assertion by Thucydides (History of the Peloponnesian War 15.8) that the Spartans marched into battle to the sound of many aulos players “not for religious reasons, but in order that they might advance in unison with the rhythm,” reveals that a religious explanation of this practice was in fact current in his day, and that there was some anxiety about this. Plutarch in Life of Aristides mentions a violent “Procession of the Lydians” in the rites of Artemis at Sparta, noting that “some say” that the rite arose from an incident at the battle of Plataea. The association of Artemis Orthia and Lydia is part of the lore of the Asiatic origin of her statue at Sparta.” - Mark Munn, The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia: A Study of Sovereignty in Ancient Religion. University of California Press, 2006. p. 91.
