Epigonion

[2] It was undoubtedly a kind of harp or psaltery, since in an instrument of so many strings some must have been of different lengths, for tension and thickness only could hardly have produced forty different sounds, or even twenty, supposing that they were arranged in pairs of unisons.

[4] Juba II, king of Mauretania, who reigned from 30 BC, said that Epigonus brought the instrument from Alexandria and played upon it with the fingers of both hands, not only using it as an accompaniment to the voice, but introducing chromatic passages,[5] and a chorus of other stringed instruments, probably citharas, to accompany the voice.

Vincenzo Galilei[7] has given us a description of the epigonion accompanied by an illustration, representing his conception of the ancient instrument, an upright psaltery with the outline of the clavicytherium (but no keyboard).

[8] In 2008, members of the Ancient Instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application (ASTRA) project used physical modeling synthesis to simulate the epigonion.

ASTRA describes the sound of their modelled epigonion as "metallic, crisp and bright, with a quite different timbre in the low and high range".