Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/122

110 110 H M E R need to understand it only of that poem, as Mr Grote does (Part i. c. 21). In any case the incident shows that the poems of the Ionic Homer had gained in the 6th century B.C., and in the Doric parts of the Peloponnesus, the ascend ency, the national importance, and the almost canonical character which they ever afterwards retained. 1 At Athens there was a law that the Homeric poems should be recited (pai/ai&amp;gt;Seicr0cu) on every occasion of the Panathensea. This law is appealed to as an espscial glory of Athens by the orator Lycurgus (Leocr., 102). Perhaps therefore the custom of public recitation was exceptional, and unfortunately we do not know when or by whom it was introduced. The Platonic dialogue Hipparchus attri butes it to Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus. This, however, is part of the historical myth, in the Platonic style, of which the dialogue mainly consists. The choice of a member of the tjTant family as the type of an enlightened despot was evidently made, not on grounds of evidence, but merely as a sign of reaction against popular sentiment. Moreover, the author of the dialogue makes (perhaps wilfully) all the historical mistakes which Thucydides notices in a well- known passage (vi. 54-59). In one point, however, his testimony is valuable. He tells us that the law required the rhapsodists to recite &quot; taking each other up in order (e &amp;gt;7roA.7^ecos e c^e^s), as they still do.&quot; This recurs in a different form in the statement of Diogenes Laertius (i. 2, 57) that Solon made a law that the poems should be recited &quot; with prompting &quot; (so we must understand e vTro/SoXrjs). The question as between Solon and Hipparchus cannot be settled ; but it is at least clear that a due order of recita tion was secured by the presence of a person charged to give the rhapsodists their cue (v7ro/3div). It was neces sary, of course, to divide the poem to be recited into parts, and to compel each contending rhapsodist to take the part assigned to him. Otherwise they would choose favourite or show passages. The practice ^)f yoets or rnapsodists (we cannot always tell which) contending for the prize at the great religious festivals is of considerable antiquity, though apparently post-Homeric. It is brought vividly before us in the Hymn to Apollo (see the passage mentioned above), and in two Hymns to Aphrodite (v. and ix.). 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. The germ of such contests may, however, be found in the story of Thamyris, the Thracian singer, who boasted that he could conquer even the Muses in song (//. ii. 594jf.). Much has been made in this part of the subject of a family or clan (yeVos) of Homeridse in the island of Chios. On the one hand, it seemed to follow from the existence of such a family that Homer is a mere &quot; eponymus,&quot; or mythi cal ancestor ; on the other hand, it became easy to imagine the Homeric poems handed clown orally in a family whose hereditary occupation it was to recite them, possibly to add new episodes from time to time, or to combine their materials in new ways, as their poetical gifts permitted. But, although there is no reason to doubt the existence of a family of &quot; Homeridaa,&quot; it is far from certain, that they had anything to do with Homeric poetry. The word occurs first in Pindar (Nem. 2, 2), who applies it to the rhapso dists ( Op^pi Sai paTmov eTreW dotSot). On this a scholiast says that &quot;Homeridae&quot; denoted originally the descendants of Homer, who sang his poems in succession, but afterwards the rhapsodists who did not claim descent from him. He 1 We may compare the exclamation of the Spartan envoys to Hiero, fl Kt fj.fy olfjiw^fitv 6 neXoTTi Sr/s Ayafj.ffj.vtav, &c., showing that the glories of the early Achoean empire, with Homer for its vates sacer, were adopted without reserve by the Dorian conquerors. adds that there was a famous rhapsodist, Cyna3thus of Chios, who was said to be the author of the Hymn to Apollo, and to have first recited Homer at Syracuse about the 69th Olympiad. Nothing here connects the Homeridae with Chios. Our knowledge of Chian Homeridse comes chiefly from the lexicon of Harpocration, where we are told that Acusilaus and Hellanicus said that they were so called from the poet, but that Seleucus pronounced this to be an error. Strabo, also, says that the Chians put forward the Homerida) as an argument in support of their claim to Homer. These HomeridsB, then, belonged to Chios, but there is no indication of their being rhapsodists. On the contrary, Plato uses the word to include interpreters and admirers in short, the whole i mritual kindred&quot;- of Homer (Rep., 599 E ; Phccdr., 252 13 ; Ion, 530 D). And although we hear of &quot;descendants of Creophylus&quot; as in possession of the Homeric poems, there is no similar story about descendants of Homer himself. Such is the evi dence on which so many inferences are based. The result of the notices now collected is to show that the early history of epic recitation consists of (1) passages in the Homeric hymns showing that poets con tended for the prize at the great festivals, (2) the passing mention in Herodotus of rhapsodists at Sicyon, and (3) a law at Athens, of unknown date, 2 regulating the recitation at the Panathenaea. Let us now compare these data with the account given in the Homeric poems. The word &quot; rhapsode &quot; does not yet exist ; we hear only of the &quot; singer &quot; (dotSos), who does not carry a wand or laurel- branch, but the lyre (&amp;lt;dp//.iy), with which he accompanies his &quot;song.&quot; In the Iliad even the epic &quot;singer&quot; is not met with, but Achilles himself sings the stories of heroes (Kia di/Spwv) in his tent, and Patroclus is waiting appar ently to take up the song in his turn (II. ix. 191). Again we do not hear of poetical contests (except in the story of Thatnyris already mentioned) or of recitation of epic poetry at festivals. The Odyssey gives us pictures of two great houses, in Ithaca and in Phseacia ; and each has its singer. The song is on a subject taken from the Trojan war, at some point chosen by the singer hisiself, or by his hearers. Thus Phemius pleases the suitors by singing of the cala mitous return of the Greeks ; Demodocus sings of a quarrel between Ulysses and Achilles, and then, on being asked to change the theme, of the wooden horse and the capture of Troy. It may be granted that the author of the Odyssey can hardly have been just such a singer as he himself describes. The songs of Phemius and Demodocus are too short, and have too much the character of improvisations. Nor is it necessary to suppose that epic poetry, at the time to which the picture in the Odyssey belongs, was confined to the one type represented. Yet in several respects the conditions under which the singer finds himself in the house of a chief like Odysseus or Alcinous are more in harmony with the character of Homeric poetry than those of the later rhapsodic contests. The subdivision of a poem like the Iliad or Odyssey among different and necessarily unequal performers must have been injurious to the effect. The highly theatrical manner of recitation which was fostered by the spirit of competition, and by the example of the stage, cannot have done justice to the even move ment of the epic style. It is not certain indeed that the practice of reciting a long poem by the agency of several competitors was ancient, or that it prevailed elsewhere than at Athens ; but as rhapsodists were numerous, and popular favour throughout Greece became more and more confined to one or two great works, it must have become almost a 2 For the assertions of the Platonic Hipparchus and of Diogenes Laertius are contradictory. The orators Lycurgus and Isocrates give no date. The question is complicated by the stories about Pisistratus.