Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/56

34 34 HISTORY OF THE gether. The term rhapsodising applies equally well to the bard who recites his own poem (as to Homer, as the poet of the Iliad and Odyssey *), and to the declaimer who recites anew the song that has been heard a thousand times before. Every poem can be rhapsodised which is composed in an epic tone, and in which the verses are of equal length, without being distributed into corresponding parts of a larger whole, strophes, or similar systems. Thus we find this term applied to philosophical songs of purification by Empedocles (KaOap/ioi), and to iambics by Archilochus and Simonides, which were strung together in the manner of hexameters f; it was, indeed, only lyric poetry, like Pindar's odes, which could not be rhapsodised. Rhapsodists were also not improperly called arix$>3oi, because all the poems which they re- cited were composed in single lines independent of each other (oti'xoi). This also is evidently the meaning of the name rhapsadist, which, ac- cording to the laws of the language, as well as the best authorities §, ought to be derived from pdirreiv aoili]v, and denotes the coupling to- gether of verses without any considerable divisions or pauses — in other words, the even, unbroken, and continuous flow of the epic poem. As the ancients in general show great steadiness and consistency, both in art and literature, and adhered, without any feeling of satiety or craving after novelty, to those models and styles of composition, which had been once recognised as the most perfect ; so epic poems, amongst the Greeks, continued to be rhapsodised for upwards of a thousand years. It is true, indeed, that at a later period the Homeric poems, like those of Hesiod, were connected with a musical accompaniment ||, and it is said that even Terpander the Lesbian adapted the hexameters of Homer, as well as his own, to tunes made according to certain fixed nomes or styles of music, and to have thus sung them at the contests % and that Ste- sander the Samian appeared at the Pythian games as the first who sung the Homeric poems to the cithara**. This assimilation between the delivery of epic and lyric poetry was however very far from being gene- rally adopted throughout Greece, as the epic recitation or rhapsodia is always clearly distinguished from the poems sung to the cithara at the musical contests ; and how great an effect an exhibition of this kind, p. COO D. Concerning Hesiod as a rhapsodist, Nicocles ap. Schol. Pindar., Nem. ii. 1 . t See Athenaeus, xiv. p. 6'20 C. Compare Plato, Ion. p. 531. X Menaechmus in Schol. Pind., Nem. ii. I. § The Homerids are called by Pindar, Nem. ii. 2, ptt^rZii Wwt uodoi, that is, car- jninum pei-pelua oratione reatatorum, Dissen. ed. min. p. 371. In the scholia to this i ussage a verse is cited under the name of Hesiod, in which he ascribes the pd-r- <rtiv uoihh to himself and Homer, and, moreover, in reference to a hymn, not an epic poem consisting of several parts. ih. p. 632 D. "Oftvign fi-.f. iXetrcitixitKt vruirxv luurou rhv vroin<w rests on erroneous hypotheses. % Plutarch dcMusica, 3. ** Athen. xiv. p. 633 A.
 * Homer, pa-fyuhu rtiguuv, the Iliad and Odyssey, according to Plato, Rep. x.
 * Athenaeus, xiv. p. 620 B, after Chamaeleon. But the argument of Athenaeus,