Music played a fundamental role in the culture of ancient Greece, its presence was highly appreciated and awaited in private and public holidays. The popularity of music in society caused ancient Greek philosophers to become concerned about the nature of music and its effects on people, and they agreed that music could influence a person's ethics (character). Ethos is an ancient Greek term used to describe the moral force of music in educating the soul, mind and behaviors of an individual. In both the science and philosophy of music, principles were established for how music could convey, strengthen, and create ethical states and influence the musical practices of ancient Greece. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The Pythagoreans developed mathematical laws that governed music. They discovered that those same laws operated both in the cosmos and in the human soul which was kept in harmony by numerical relationships. Music can enter the soul and restore or shatter its internal balance, influencing character and/or behavior. The idea that music was linked to the cosmos, rational order and ethics dominated in ancient Greece because it suggested that music could transform people. Music was believed to cause and heal agitation. Aristotle's theory of imitation described how music had the ability to intensify and imitate human emotions (mimesis), and argued that music could also “cure” certain emotions through its ability to induce emotional release (catharsis). In Politics, Aristotle stated that music can represent and arouse emotions in an individual, and therefore influence their ethics. He believed that music that imitates "bad" emotions such as violence could warp a person's character. Both Aristotle and Plato thought that music should be a part of education because of the influence it has on an individual; however, they did not approve of virtuosity or listening to music for enjoyment other than for educational purposes. Music was supposed to be for the intellect and the soul, not for the production of sound. Plato loved religious and social music for the ethical force it derived from it. He stated that music shapes ethics most profoundly when people participate by dancing because of the direct impact that rhythm, meter and melody had on the individual. For example, choral song-dance required performers to take part in the ceremonial experience, and Plato believed that through movement, meter, melody, and tempo, the ethos of music was strengthened. Each isolated element would have had the same ethos, but it would not have had as precise and powerful an impact on the listener. Plato claimed that choral songs educated the people involved and, more specifically, enabled them to achieve moral excellence. The ethics of metrics became important when poetic genres allowed for different or new metrical types. Plato criticized this phenomenon because it did not follow the expected pattern that would imitate the approved virtue. There were various meters designed for a variety of effects such as the dochmian meter to show anxiety or desperation, the anapestic meter to convey dignity, the peonic meter to instill excitement, and the epitrite meter to convey death. Evidently, the meter was carefully chosen for music at funerals, festivals, dramas, etc. Time also played a very important role and had to be chosen carefully since its variations could generate different types of ethics at the same pace. Damon, an Athenian philosopher and theorist"..