Rhapsodists

Rhapsodists (Gr., from rhaptein, 'to stitch together,' and odē, 'an ode'), a class of men in ancient Greece who travelled from place to place reciting poetry. They are distinct from the professional minstrels (aoïdōi) of the Odyssey, although their legitimate successors; but they also seem, at first at least, to have been composers of epic poetry, although it is hardly probable that this was often the case after the 6th century B.C. We find distinct traces of the public recitation by rhapsodists of the Homeric poems as early as 600 B.C., at places so far apart as Sicyon, Syracuse, Delos, Chios, Cyprus, and Athens. Indeed at Athens ancient law prescribed the recitation of Homer once every four years at the festival of the Great Panathenæa. To the early rhapsodists mainly belongs the credit of the wide diffusion of the Homeric poems throughout the Greek world. They themselves were held in high esteem and richly rewarded; but in later days the art came to be practised in a mere mechanical manner, and the influence of the rhapsodists ebbed accordingly. In Plato's Ion we get a picture of the rhapsodist as he was about the middle of the 4th century B.C. Ion is a native of Ephesus who goes from city to city reciting Homer to crowds of hearers, appearing on a platform in a richly-embroidered dress, a golden wreath on his head. He adds dramatic force to his declamation, and brings Homer home to his hearers' hearts, being himself possessed by Homer. Moreover, he interprets Homer in a continuous exposition, and is proud of his fluency of ideas. Ion is described as devoted exclusively to Homer, but there were a few of his brethren who gave themselves also to Orpheus, Musæus, Hesiod, Archilochus, or Simonides. It is unlikely that Homer was ever sung to music, although in earlier times there were heroic lays which were sung to the accompaniment of the lyre. As lyric poetry became more distinctly cultivated, such epic lays came to be simply declaimed, the rhapsodist holding a branch of bay in his hand instead of a lyre.