What can "dicere" mean in the context of a musical instrument?

Question

Apuleius, Metamorphoses VI.24.3:

scaena sibi sic concinnata ut Musae quidem chorum canerent, tibias inflaret Saturus, et Paniscus ad fistulam diceret.

This is from the Loeb edition, which translates it as follows:

"She had arranged the stage so that the Muses were singing in chorus, a Satyr blew the flute, and a Paniscus played on the reed-pipes."

Now, I have never seen dicere used to mean "play [an instrument]". Is this common? Or just extremely rare? Or an error by the Loeb edition?

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Here is the Cambridge edition:

scaena sibi sic concinnata ut Musae quidem chorum canerent aut tibias inflaret, Saturus et Paniscus ad fistulam dicerent.

It translates the text as follows:

"...while a Satyr and a little Pan sang to the shepherd's pipe."

I must say this translation is much closer to what I would expect; at least Lewis & Short have dicere "to sing":

4. To describe, relate, sing, celebrate in writing (mostly poet.):
   "tibi dicere laudes", Tib. 1, 3, 31;
   so, "laudes Phoebi et Dianae", Hor. C. S. 76:
   "Dianam, Cynthium, Latonam", id. C. 1, 21, 1:
   "Alciden puerosque Ledae", id. ib. 1, 12, 25:
   "caelestes, pugilemve equumve", id. ib. 4, 2, 19:
   "Pelidae stomachum", id. ib. 1, 6, 5:
   "bella", id. Ep. 1, 16, 26; Liv. 7, 29:
   "carmen", Hor. C. 1, 32, 3; id. C. S. 8; Tib. 2, 1, 54:
   "modos", Hor. C. 3, 11, 7:
   "silvestrium naturas", Plin. 15, 30, 40, 138 et saep.:
   "temporibus Augusti dicendis non defuere decora ingenia", Tac. A. 1, 1; id. H. 1, 1:
   "vir neque silendus neque dicendus sine cura", Vell. 2, 13.—

And the Cambridge has a different Latin text, which I cannot judge, but which allows this translation, contrary to the Loeb's Latin.

At any rate, even the "sing" from the Cambridge seems different from the usage in L&S to me. For each of those quotations has a theme, i.e. a complement with an 'object-like' meaning, such as a direct object or an noun that agrees with the gerundive of dicere. So I read the L&S definition as "to sing [something] in writing", which I would understand as "to write about something in verse". That hardly fits the Cambridge translation "[they] sang to the shepherd's pipe", which strongly suggests oral singing, and without a theme.

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How would you feel about a translation "they recited to the shephard's pipe"? Or is that too literal and simple-minded of me? I can imagine the Ancients' reciting to a musical instrument, although I'm not entirely sure whether I remember correctly that they did this (think of recitals like those in the Matthäus-Passion).

Answer 1

It's not necessary to be too literal in translating something like this, and I can't see any objection to the poetic licence in your suggestion of 'reciting', which makes the English roll along nicely while avoiding repetition : in fact I rather like it.

It isn't unusual to find idiomatic uses of dicere translated into English. A single word to cover all of these might be 'utter', generally used of causing some sort of sound, though it's obviously preferable to use a word of more particular meaning. Smith's Latin-English Dictionary has under Dico at item IV, I :

… to describe, sing, celebrate in verse (mostly poet.) : tibi dicere laudes, Tib. 1, 3, 31 ; laudes Phoebi et Dianae, Hor. C S. 76 : Dianam, Cynthium, Latonam, id. Od. 1, 21, 1 : coelestes, pugilemve equumve, ib. 4, 2, 19 : Pelidae stomachum, ib. 1, 6, 5 …

— and others from Horace, Livy and Pliny.

For what it's worth, my copy of the Adlington translation of 1566 has :

… The Muses sang with sweet harmony, Apollo tuned pleasantly to the Harpe, Venus danced finely : Satirus and Paniscus plaid on their pipes ; and thus was Psyches married to Cupid …