It is usually believed to be a stringed instrument similar to a psaltery or harp, though some earlier sources like the translated fragments of Posidonius discuss arguments that it may have been a woodwind.
Modern scholars have mostly accepted the string instrument classification while noting that the evidence from ancient texts "falls well short of proving it.
The gathered company then turn to the question of whether the instrument is of Lydian origin beginning a sharp dispute between Athenaeus and Posidonius.
The skill of a magadis player is described in a dithyramb by Telestes:[6]Each man hurling forth a different sound from the others Roused up the horn-voiced magadis Turning his hand quickly back and forth across Five-staved joinings of the strings Like a runner at the turning post Scholars have speculated whether "horn-voiced" (keratophonon) could be a reference to plucking of strings with a plectrum, or perhaps a reference to the tone of the instrument, or a structural element of the instrument.
Xenophon mentions Thracian soldiers playing ox-hide trumpets (salpinyxin omoboeias) in what he calls the "manner of the magadis".