Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/152

 13G HISTORY OF GREECE. ibrmai.ccs, in ullages, so in that of the early Grecian epic, a very large proportion of its impressive effect was derived from the talent of the reciter and the force of the general accompani ments, and would have disappeared altogether in solitary reading. Originally, the bard sung his own epical narrative, commencing with a prooemium or hymn to one of the gods : l his profession was separate and special, like that of the carpenter, the leech, or the prophet : his manner and enunciation must have required par- ticular training no less than his imaginative faculty. His charac- ter presents itself in the Odyssey as one highly esteemed ; and in the Iliad, even Achilles does not disdain to touch the lyre with his own hands, and to sing heroic deeds. 2 Not only did the Iliad and Odyssey, and the poems embodied in the Epic Cycle, produce all their impression and gain all their renown by this process of oral delivery, but even the lyric and choric poets who succeeded them were known and felt in the same way by the general public, even after the full establishment of habits of reading among lettered men. While in the case of the epic, the recitation or singing had been extremely simple, and the measure comparatively little diversified, with no other accompan- iment than that of the four-stringed harp, all the variations superinduced upon the original hexameter, beginning with the pentameter and iambus, and proceeding step by step to the com- 1 The Homeric hymns are procems of this sort, some very short, consisting only of a few lines, others of considerable length. The Hymn (or, rather, one of the two hymns) to Apollo is cited by Thueydides as the Prooem of Apollo. The Hymns to Aphrodite, Apollo, Hermes, Demeter, and Dionysus, are genuine epical narratives. Hermann (Praef. ad Hymn. p. Ixxxix.) pro- nounces the Hymn to Aphrodite to be the oldest and most genuine : portions of .the Hymn to Apollo (Herm. p. xx.) are also very old, but both that hymn and the others are largely interpolated. His opinion respecting these inter- polations, however, is disputed by Franke (Praefat. ad Hymn. Homeric, p. ix-xix.) ; and the distinction between what is genuine and what is spurious, depends upon criteria not very distinctly assignable. Compare Ulrici, Gesch, der Ep. Poes. pp. 385-391. of Klytaemnestra, bear out this position (Odyss. i. 155; iii. 267; viii. 490; xxi. 330; Achilles in Iliad, ix. 190). A degree of inviolability seems attached to the person of the bf rd as well M to that of the herali (Odyss. xxii. 355-357).
 * Phemius, Demodokus, and the nameless bard who guarded the fidelity