Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/520

506 picious ; in the nineteenth, the recognition of Ulysses by his old nurse, and, most of all, some parts towards the end. All that follows after xxiii. 296 was declared spurious even by the Alexandrine critics Aristophanes and Aristar- chus. Spohn {Comment, de eoctrem. Odysseae Parte^ 1816) has proved the validity of this judgment almost beyond the possibility of doubt. Yet, as Aliiller and Nitzsch observe, it is very likely that the original Odyssey was concluded in a somewhat similar manner ; in particular, we can hardly do without the recognition of Laertes, who is so often alluded to in the course of the poem, and without some reconciliation of Ulysses with the friends of the murdered suitors. The second Aecyia (xxiv. init.) is evidently spurious, and, like many parts of the first Necr/ia (xi.), most likely taken from a similar passage in the Nostoi, in which was narrated the arrival of Agamemnon in Hades. (Pans. x. 23. $ 4.)

Considering all these interpolations and the ori- ginal unity, which has only been obscured and not destroyed by them, we must come to the conclu- sion that the Homeric poems were originally com- posed as poetical wholes, but that a long oral tra- dition gave occasion to great alterations in their original form.

We have hitherto considered only the negative part of Wolfs arguments. He denied, 1st, the ex- istence of the art of writing at the time when the Homeric poems were composed ; 2d, the possibility of composing and delivering them without that art ; and, 3rdly, their poetical unity. From these pre- mises he came to the conclusion, that the Homeric poems originated as small songs, unconnected with one another, which, after being preserved in this state for a long time, were at length put together. The agents, to whom he attributed these two tasks of composing and preserving on the one hand, and of collecting and combining on the other, are the rhapsodists and Peisistratus.

The subject of the rhapsodists is one of the most complicated and difficult of all ; because the fact is, that we know very little about them, and thus a large field is opened to conjecture and hypothesis, (Wolf, Pro^. p. 9Q ; Nitzsch, Pral.ad Plat. Ion.; Heyne, 2. Eoecurs. ad IL. 24 ; Bbckh, ad Pind. Nem. ii. 1, Isthm. iii. 55 ; Nitzsch, LidagandLte, ^c. Hidor. crit. ; Kreuser, d. Horn. Rhapsod.) Wolf derives the name of rhapsodist from pairr^v (j'Si^v, which he interprets hreviora carmina modo et Qrdine puhlicae recitationi apto connectere. These hreviora carmina are the rhapsodies of which the Iliad and Odyssey consist, not indeed containing originally one book each, as they do now, but sometimes more and sometimes less. The nature and condition of these rhapsodists may be learned from Homer himself, where they appear as singing at the banquets, games, and festivals of the princes, and are held in high honour. {Od. iii. 267, xviii. 383.) In fact, the first rhapsodists were the poets themselves, just as the first dramatic poets were the first actors. Therefore Homer and Hesiod are said to have rhapsodised. (Plat. Rep. x. p, 600 ; Schol. a<i Pind. Nem. ii. 1.) We must imagine that these minstrels were spread over all Greece, and that they did not confine themselves to the recital of the Homeric poems. One class of rhap- sodists at Chios, the Homerids (Harpocrat. s. v. 'OjUTjpiSoi), who called themselves descendants of the poet, possessed these particular poems, and transmitted them to their disciples by oral teaching, and not by writing. This kind of oral teaching was most carefully cultivated in Greece even when the use of writing was quite common. The tragic and comic poets employed no other way of training the actors than this oral dtdaaKaKia^ with which the greatest accuracy was combined. Therefore, says Wolf, it is not likely that, although not com- mitted to writing, the Plomeric poems underwent very great changes by a long oral tradition ; only it is impossible that they should have remained quite zmaltered. Many of the rhapsodists were not destitute of poetical genius, or they acquired it by the constant recitation of those beautiful lays. Why should they not have sometimes adapted their recitation to the immediate occasion, or even have endeavoured to make some passages better than they were?

We can admit almost all this, without drawing from it Wolfs conclusion. Does not such a con- dition of the rhapsodists agree as well with the task which we assign to them, of preserving and reciting a poem which already existed as a Avhole ? Even the etymology of the name of rhapsodist, which is surprisingly inconsistent with Wolfs general view, favours that of his adversaries. Wolfs fundamental opinion is, that the original songs were unconnected and singly recited. How then can the rhapsodists have obtained their name from connecting poems ? On the other hand, if the Homeric poems originally existed as wholes, and the rhapsodists connected the single parts of these wholes for public recitation, they might per- haps be called " connecters of songs," But this ety- mology has not appeared satisfactory to some, who have thought that this process would rather be a keeping together than a putting together. They have therefore supposed that the word was derived from pd§dos, the staff or ensign of the bards (lies. Theog. 30) ; an etymology which seemed counte- nanced by Pindar's {Isthm. iii. 5) expression pd§Sov B-eaireaiwv liriuv. But Pindar in another pas- sage gives the other etymology {Nem. ii. 1); and, besides, it does not appear how pa^cfhos could be formed from pd§8os, which would make ^a§8cf;d6s. Others, therefore, have thought of pdiTLs (a stick), and formed paiTKrcpdSs, pal/codos. But even this will not do ; for leaving out of view that pdiris does not occur in the signification of puSdos., the word would be pairiSq)86s. Nothing is left, therefore, but the etymology from pdirTeiu cpSds, which is only to be interpreted in the proper way. Milller {Ibid. p. 33) says that pa^puBtiu " signifies nothing more than the peculiar method of epic recitation^'' consisting in some high-pitched sonorous declamations, with certain simple modu- lations of the voice, not in singing regularly ac- companied by an instrument, which was the method of reciting lyrical poetry. " Every poem," says Miiller, "can be rhapsodised which is composed in an epic tone, and in which the verses are of eqnal length, without being distributed into correspond- ing parts of a larger whole, strophes, or similar systems. Rhapsodists were also not improperly called (rTix<?5oi, because all the poems which they recited were composed in single lines independent of each other ((ttixw)-" He thinks, therefore, that pdirreiv (fBi^v denotes the coupling together of verses without any considerable divisions or pauses ; in other words, the even, continuous, and unbroken flow of the epic poem. But ^5j{ does not mean a