Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Psaltria

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

PSAL'TRIA (ψάλτρια). In a general sense a female who plays upon any stringed instrument, as in the annexed figure (Psaltria/1.1), from a fresco excavated at Civita, in the year 1755, representing the Muse Erato, which, in the original, has the word ψάλτρια inscribed underneath; but the term is frequently used in a more special sense to distinguish a class of women, not remarkable for rigid virtue, who made a profession amongst the Greeks of going about to play and sing at banquets for the amusement of the guests, representations of whom are frequently introduced in the designs on the Greek vases, in which revels and drinking parties (comissationes) are depicted. The same practice was introduced at Rome, after the conquest of Antiochus, by the army which had served in Asia. Liv. xxxix. 6. Cic. Sext. 54. Juv. Sat. vi. 337.

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  Psaltria/1.1