Subjelt and Shape. The poem purports to be inscribed an a pan-pipe, and to record that the instrument is dedicated by Theocritus to Pan. It consist of 20 lines, each pair of which represents on reed of the pipe. The metre is dactylic, and each successive couplet is half a foot shorter than its predecessor, so that the poem, which begins with two hexameters, ends with two catalectic dimeters, and corresponds in shape to a pan-pipe of ten reeds. 

(Gow, 1952, 553.) 

Syrinx Titulus Anth.Buc. 

nileuto
kalliopa
ellopi koura,
adu melisdois
larnakogue, hareis,
klopopator, apator,
stitas oistre Saetas,
psichan a brotobamon,
pima Paris fteto Simahidas
o tode tufloforon eraton
pappofonou Turias exilasen
os svesen anorean isaudea
elkos, agalma pothio purismaragou,
os moisa ligu paxen iostefano
kouras girigonas ehe tas anemodeos,
ounom olon, dixon, os tas meropos pothon
all ou peilipes aithe paros frena terma sakous,
ouhi Kerastan on pote threpsato tauropator,
Maias antipetroio thoon teken ithintira
Oudenos eunateia Makropolemoio de matir. 

On the authenticity of the poem see J. Phil. 33.128. Gow,1952. Comm. 

"The number of reeds (10) in the instrument, is not against the poem, for though numbers, above nine... are rare, as many as twelve are found. A much more serius objection is that the Greek syrinx is rectangular instrument with reeds of equal lenght (1,169 n). The stepped variety represented by the decreasing lines of the poem is perhaps Etruscan in origin and appears on Roman coins early in the first century B.C. These however seem to be its earliestappearance in Greek or Roman art, whereas there are many representations of tehe rectangular form down to the end of the third century. To this argument Edmonds replied that' the variation in the heard lenght of tehe lines would correspond naturally enough to the variation in note of the tubes of the pipe', which musical persons must have known to be effectively of unequal lenght. It seems plain however, since two lines are devoted to each pipe, that it has breadth as vell as length, or in other words that each couplet represents, not a note heard, but a visible and tangible reed, and that in this respect the Syrinx is on all fours with the other Technopaegina. Unless, therefore, examples of the stepped from of instrument can be produced from Greek land at much earlier date than any at present known itis impossible to regard the poem as by T. or even as nearly contemporary vith him. (Gow. Comm, 1952.)