"In early times popularity with the masses was a sign of bad art; hence, when a certain aulos-player had received loud applause, Asopodorus of Phlius, who was himself still waiting in the wings, said 'What's this? Something awful must have happened!' The player evidently could not have won approval with the crowd otherwise... And yet the musicians of our day set as the goal of their art success with their audiences. Hence Aristoxenus in his Drinking-Miscellany says... 'In like manner we also... now that our theaters have become utterly barbarized and this prostituted music has moved on into a state of grave corruption, will get together by ourselves, few though we be, and recall what music used to be.'
...Though I might say many more things on music, I hear the buzzing of the auloi, and will therefore bring my long-winded discourse to a close, after repeating the lines from The Aulos-Lover of Philetaerus: 'Zeus, it's indeed a fine thing to die to the music of the auloi. For only to such is it permitted in Hades to revel in love affairs, whereas those whose manners are sordid, having no knowledge of music, must carry water to the leaky jar."
-Athenaeus, "Sophists at Dinner," c. 200 CE, trans. Charles Gulick/Thomas Mathiesen