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In classical Greece, in the fifth and fourth centuries BC and perhaps earlier, a rhapsode was a professional performer of poetry, especially of epic poetry (notably the epics attributed to Homer) but also the wisdom and catalogue poetry of Hesiod and the satires of Archilochus and others. Plato's dialogue Ion, in which Socrates confronts a star rhapsode, remains our richest source of information on these artists. Often, rhapsodes are depicted in Greek art, wearing their signature cloak and carrying a staff. This equipment is also characteristic of travellers in general, implying that rhapsodes were itinerant performers, moving from town to town.
Etymology and usage
The performance of epic poetry was called in classical Greek rhapsodia, and its performer rhapsodos. The word does not occur in the early epics, which use the word aoidos ("singer") for performers in all genres including this one. It is unknown whether Hesiod and the poet(s) of the Iliad and Odyssey would have recognised and accepted the name of rhapsode; it has been argued by Walter Burkert, and is accepted by some recent scholars, that rhapsodos was by definition a performer of a fixed, written text.E.g. ; . The word rhapsodos was in use as early as Pindar (522-443 BC), who implies two different explanations of it, "singer of stitched verse", and "singer with the staff". Of these the first is etymologically correct (to be precise, it means "stitcher of verse"); the second was suggested by the fact, for which there is early evidence, that the reciter was accustomed to hold a staff (rhabdos) in his hand, perhaps, like the sceptre in the Homeric assembly, as a symbol of the right to a hearing. The etymological meaning is interesting because it is an exact metaphor for what oral narrative poets do: they stitch together formulas, lines and type-scenes in the course of performance. There are indications in Pindar and other authors that oral epic was still a living and popular tradition in the early fifth century;, pp. 157-168. all the later evidence, however, is that rhapsodes worked from written texts, and in some cases were compelled by law to do so.
Performance
It is certain that rhapsodes performed competitively, contending for prizes at religious festivals, and that this practice was already well-established by the fifth century. The Iliad alludes to the myth of Thamyris, the Thracian singer, who boasted that he could defeat even the Muses in song. He competed with them, was defeated, and was punished for his presumption with the loss of his ability to sing.Iliad 2.594-600; see scholia on this passage and Apollodorus, Library 1.3.3. Historically, the practice is first evident in Hesiod's claim that he performed a song at the funeral games for Amphidamas in Euboea and won a prize.Hesiod, Works and Days 650-662: see Hesiod, Theogony ed. M. L. West (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966) pp. 43-46. Competitive singing is depicted vividly in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and mentioned in the two Hymns to Aphrodite.Homeric Hymn to Apollo 165-173; Homeric Hymns 5 and 9. The latter of these may evidently be taken to belong to Salamis in Cyprus and the festival of the Cyprian Aphrodite, in the same way that the Hymn to Apollo belongs to Delos and the Delian gathering.
An early historical mention of rhapsodes occurs in the Histories of Herodotus (c. 440 BC). He tells the story that at Sicyon the ruler Cleisthenes (600-560 BC) expelled the rhapsodes on account of the poems of Homer, because they promoted Argos and the Argives.Herodotus 5.67. This description applies very well to the Iliad, in which "Argives" is one of the alternate names for the Greek warriors; it may have suited the Thebaid still better, since Argos was named in the first line of that poem. The incident seems to show that poems performed by rhapsodes had political and propagandistic importance in the Peloponnese in the early sixth century BC.
At Athens, by 330 BC, there was a law that rhapsodes should perform the Homeric poems at every Panathenaic festival; this law is appealed to as glory of Athens by the orator Lycurgus.Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 102. The Iliad was also recited at the festival of the Brauronia, at Brauron in Attica (Hesychius s.v. Brauronia). Perhaps therefore such a custom was exceptional, and we do not know when or by whom it was introduced, although the Platonic dialogue Hipparchus (not really by Plato, but probably of the fourth century BC) attributes it to Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus.Hipparchus 228b8. This, however, may be merely part of the historical romance of the Pisistratids: it is telling that Herodotus (7.6), who knew about Hipparchus' literary activities, knows nothing about this. The author of the Hipparchus makes (perhaps wilfully) all the mistakes about the family of Pisistratus which Thucydides notices in a well-known passage (6.54-59). The Hipparchus adds that the law required the rhapsodists to follow on from one another in order, "as they still do". This recurs in a different form in the much later statement of Diogenes Laertius (1.2.57) that Solon made a law that the poems should be recited "with prompting". Many Athenian laws were falsely attributed to early lawgivers, but it is at least clear that by the fourth century the Homeric poems were a compulsory part of the Panathenaea, and were to be recited in order. They are too long for a single rhapsode or for a single day's performance. Therefore they had to be divided into parts, and each rhapsode had to take his assigned part (otherwise they would have chosen favourite or prize passages).
Complementary evidence on oral performance of poetry in classical Greece comes in the form of references to a family, clan, or professional association of Homeridae (literally "children of Homer"). These certainly had an existence in the fifth and fourth centuries BC and certainly performed poems attributed to Homer. Pindar seems to count the Homeridae as rhapsodes;Pindar, Nemean Odes 2.1-5. other sources do not specifically confirm this categorisation.
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References
Ancient music | Ancient Greek literature | Defunct occupations | Entertainment occupations | Oral epic poets
"Rhapsode"