Rhapsode
Encyclopedia
A rhapsode or, in modern usage, rhapsodist, refers to a classical Greek
professional performer of epic poetry
in the fifth and fourth centuries BC (and perhaps earlier). Rhapsodes notably performed the epics of Homer
(Iliad
and Odyssey
) but also the wisdom
and catalogue poetry of Hesiod
and the satires of Archilochus
and others. Plato
's dialogue Ion
, in which Socrates
confronts a star player rhapsode, remains our richest source of information on these artists. Often, rhapsodes are depicted in Greek art, wearing their signature cloak and carrying a staff. This equipment is also characteristic of travellers in general, implying that rhapsodes were itinerant performers, moving from town to town.
according to the preferred taste of a specific location's audience. However, the outer framework of the epic would remain virtually the same in every "singing", thus securing the projection of underlying themes such as of morality or honour. The performance of epic poetry was called in classical Greek rhapsodia (ῥαψῳδία), and its performer rhapsodos. The word does not occur in the early epics, which use the word aoidos
(ἀοιδός "singer") for performers in all genres including this one. It is unknown whether Hesiod and the poet(s) of the Iliad
and Odyssey
would have recognised and accepted the name of rhapsode; it has been argued by Walter Burkert, and is accepted by some recent scholars, that rhapsodos was by definition a performer of a fixed, written text.
The word rhapsodos was in use as early as Pindar
(522–443 BC), who implies two different explanations of it, "singer of stitched verse", and "singer with the staff". Of these the first is etymologically correct; the second was suggested by the fact, for which there is early evidence, that the singer was accustomed to hold a staff (ῥάβδος rhabdos) in his hand, perhaps, like the sceptre in the Homeric assembly, as a symbol of the right to a hearing or to "emphasize the rhythm or to give grandeur to their gestures". The etymological meaning is interesting because it is an exact metaphor for what oral narrative poets
do: they stitch together formulas, lines and type-scenes in the course of performance. There are indications in Pindar and other authors that oral epic was still a living and popular tradition in the early fifth century; all the later evidence, however, is that rhapsodes worked from written texts, and in some cases were compelled by law to do so.
alludes to the myth of Thamyris
, the Thracian singer, who boasted that he could defeat even the Muses in song. He competed with them, was defeated, and was punished for his presumption with the loss of his ability to sing. Historically, the practice is first evident in Hesiod's claim that he performed a song at the funeral games for Amphidamas in Euboea and won a prize. Competitive singing is depicted vividly in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo
and mentioned in the two Hymns to Aphrodite. 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.
An early historical mention of rhapsodes occurs in the Histories of Herodotus
(c. 440 BC). He tells the story that at Sicyon
the ruler Cleisthenes
(600-560 BC) expelled the rhapsodes on account of the poems of Homer, because they promoted Argos
and the Argives. This description applies very well to the Iliad
, in which "Argives" is one of the alternate names for the Greek warriors; it may have suited the Thebaid
still better, since Argos was named in the first line of that poem. The incident seems to show that poems performed by rhapsodes had political and propagandistic importance in the Peloponnese in the early sixth century BC.
At Athens
, by 330 BC, there was a law that rhapsodes should perform the Homeric poems at every Panathenaic festival; this law is appealed to as glory of Athens by the orator Lycurgus
. Perhaps therefore such a custom was exceptional, and we do not know when or by whom it was introduced, although the Platonic dialogue Hipparchus
(not really by Plato, but probably of the fourth century BC) attributes it to Hipparchus, son of Peisistratos (Athens)
. The Hipparchus adds that the law required the rhapsodists to follow on from one another in order, "as they still do". This recurs in a different form in the much later statement of Diogenes Laertius
(1.2.57) that Solon
made a law that the poems should be recited "with prompting". Many Athenian laws were falsely attributed to early lawgivers, but it is at least clear that by the fourth century the Homeric poems were a compulsory part of the Panathenaea, and were to be recited in order. They are too long for a single rhapsode or for a single day's performance. Therefore they had to be divided into parts, and each rhapsode had to take his assigned part (otherwise they would have chosen favourite or prize passages).
Complementary evidence on oral performance of poetry in classical Greece comes in the form of references to a family, clan, or professional association of Homeridae
(literally "children of Homer"). These certainly had an existence in the fifth and fourth centuries BC and certainly performed poems attributed to Homer
. Pindar
seems to count the Homeridae as rhapsodes; other sources do not specifically confirm this categorisation.
Classical Greece
Classical Greece was a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC. This classical period had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundation of Western civilizations. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, such as...
professional performer of epic poetry
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
in the fifth and fourth centuries BC (and perhaps earlier). Rhapsodes notably performed the epics of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
(Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
and Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
) but also the wisdom
Wisdom literature
Wisdom literature is the genre of literature common in the Ancient Near East. This genre is characterized by sayings of wisdom intended to teach about divinity and about virtue...
and catalogue poetry of Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
and the satires of Archilochus
Archilochus
Archilochus, or, Archilochos While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer , p...
and others. Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's dialogue Ion
Ion (dialogue)
In Plato's Ion Socrates discusses with Ion, a professional rhapsode who also lectures on Homer, the question of whether the rhapsode, a performer of poetry, gives his performance on account of his skill and knowledge or by virtue of divine possession...
, in which Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
confronts a star player rhapsode, remains our richest source of information on these artists. Often, rhapsodes are depicted in Greek art, wearing their signature cloak and carrying a staff. This equipment is also characteristic of travellers in general, implying that rhapsodes were itinerant performers, moving from town to town.
Etymology and usage
The term "rhapsode" is derived from rhapsōidein (ῥαψῳδεῖν), meaning "to sew [songs] together". This word illustrates how the oral epic poet, or rhapsode, would build a repertoire of diverse myths, tales and jokes to include in the content of the epic poem. Thus it was possible, through experience and improvisatory skills, for him to shift the content of the eposEpic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
according to the preferred taste of a specific location's audience. However, the outer framework of the epic would remain virtually the same in every "singing", thus securing the projection of underlying themes such as of morality or honour. The performance of epic poetry was called in classical Greek rhapsodia (ῥαψῳδία), and its performer rhapsodos. The word does not occur in the early epics, which use the word aoidos
Aoidos
The Greek word aoidos or aōidos referred to a classical Greek singer. In modern Homeric scholarship aoidos is used by some as the technical term for a skilled oral epic poet in the tradition to which the Iliad and Odyssey are believed to belong .- Song and poetry in the Iliad and Odyssey :In...
(ἀοιδός "singer") for performers in all genres including this one. It is unknown whether Hesiod and the poet(s) of the Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
and Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
would have recognised and accepted the name of rhapsode; it has been argued by Walter Burkert, and is accepted by some recent scholars, that rhapsodos was by definition a performer of a fixed, written text.
The word rhapsodos was in use as early as Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...
(522–443 BC), who implies two different explanations of it, "singer of stitched verse", and "singer with the staff". Of these the first is etymologically correct; the second was suggested by the fact, for which there is early evidence, that the singer was accustomed to hold a staff (ῥάβδος rhabdos) in his hand, perhaps, like the sceptre in the Homeric assembly, as a symbol of the right to a hearing or to "emphasize the rhythm or to give grandeur to their gestures". The etymological meaning is interesting because it is an exact metaphor for what oral narrative poets
Oral poetry
Oral poetry can be defined in various ways. A strict definition would include only poetry that is composed and transmitted without any aid of writing. However, the complex relationships between written and spoken literature in some societies can make this definition hard to maintain, and oral...
do: they stitch together formulas, lines and type-scenes in the course of performance. There are indications in Pindar and other authors that oral epic was still a living and popular tradition in the early fifth century; all the later evidence, however, is that rhapsodes worked from written texts, and in some cases were compelled by law to do so.
Performance
It is certain that rhapsodes performed competitively, contending for prizes at religious festivals, and that this practice was already well-established by the fifth century. The IliadIliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
alludes to the myth of Thamyris
Thamyris
In Greek mythology, Thamyris , son of Philammon and the nymph Argiope, was a Thracian singer who was so proud of his skill that he boasted he could outsing the Muses. He competed against them and lost. As punishment for his presumption they blinded him, and took away his ability to make poetry and...
, the Thracian singer, who boasted that he could defeat even the Muses in song. He competed with them, was defeated, and was punished for his presumption with the loss of his ability to sing. Historically, the practice is first evident in Hesiod's claim that he performed a song at the funeral games for Amphidamas in Euboea and won a prize. Competitive singing is depicted vividly in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo
Homeric Hymns
The Homeric Hymns are a collection of thirty-three anonymous Ancient Greek hymns celebrating individual gods. The hymns are "Homeric" in the sense that they employ the same epic meter—dactylic hexameter—as the Iliad and Odyssey, use many similar formulas and are couched in the same dialect...
and mentioned in the two Hymns to Aphrodite. The latter of these may evidently be taken to belong to Salamis
Salamis, Cyprus
Salamis was an ancient Greek city-state on the east coast of Cyprus, at the mouth of the river Pedieos, 6 km north of modern Famagusta. According to tradition the founder of Salamis was Teucer, son of Telamon, who could not return home after the Trojan war because he had failed to avenge his...
in Cyprus and the festival of the Cyprian Aphrodite, in the same way that the Hymn to Apollo belongs to Delos
Delos
The island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece...
and the Delian gathering.
An early historical mention of rhapsodes occurs in the Histories of Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
(c. 440 BC). He tells the story that at Sicyon
Sicyon
Sikyon was an ancient Greek city situated in the northern Peloponnesus between Corinth and Achaea on the territory of the present-day prefecture of Corinthia...
the ruler Cleisthenes
Cleisthenes
Cleisthenes was a noble Athenian of the Alcmaeonid family. He is credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens and setting it on a democratic footing in 508/7 BC...
(600-560 BC) expelled the rhapsodes on account of the poems of Homer, because they promoted Argos
Argos
Argos is a city and a former municipality in Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Argos-Mykines, of which it is a municipal unit. It is 11 kilometres from Nafplion, which was its historic harbour...
and the Argives. This description applies very well to the Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
, in which "Argives" is one of the alternate names for the Greek warriors; it may have suited the Thebaid
Thebaid (Greek poem)
The Thebaid or Thebais is an Ancient Greek epic poem of uncertain authorship sometimes attributed by early writers to Homer. It told the story of the war between the brothers Eteocles and Polynices, and was regarded as forming part of a Theban Cycle. Only fragments of the text...
still better, since Argos was named in the first line of that poem. The incident seems to show that poems performed by rhapsodes had political and propagandistic importance in the Peloponnese in the early sixth century BC.
At Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
, by 330 BC, there was a law that rhapsodes should perform the Homeric poems at every Panathenaic festival; this law is appealed to as glory of Athens by the orator Lycurgus
Lycurgus of Athens
Lycurgus was a logographer in Ancient Greece. He was one of the ten Attic orators included in the "Alexandrian Canon" compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace in the third century BCE.Lycurgus was born at Athens about 396 BC, and was the son of Lycophron, who belonged...
. Perhaps therefore such a custom was exceptional, and we do not know when or by whom it was introduced, although the Platonic dialogue Hipparchus
Hipparchus (dialogue)
The Hipparchus or Hipparch is a dialogue attributed to the classical Greek philosopher and writer Plato. There is some debate as to the work's authenticity. Stylistically, the dialogue bears many similarities to the Minos...
(not really by Plato, but probably of the fourth century BC) attributes it to Hipparchus, son of Peisistratos (Athens)
Hipparchus (son of Pisistratus)
Hipparchus or Hipparch was a member of the ruling class of Athens. He was one of the sons of Peisistratos.Although he was said among Greeks to have been the tyrant of Athens along with his brother Hippias when Peisistratos died, about 528 BC...
. The Hipparchus adds that the law required the rhapsodists to follow on from one another in order, "as they still do". This recurs in a different form in the much later statement of Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...
(1.2.57) that Solon
Solon
Solon was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic Athens...
made a law that the poems should be recited "with prompting". Many Athenian laws were falsely attributed to early lawgivers, but it is at least clear that by the fourth century the Homeric poems were a compulsory part of the Panathenaea, and were to be recited in order. They are too long for a single rhapsode or for a single day's performance. Therefore they had to be divided into parts, and each rhapsode had to take his assigned part (otherwise they would have chosen favourite or prize passages).
Complementary evidence on oral performance of poetry in classical Greece comes in the form of references to a family, clan, or professional association of Homeridae
Homeridae
The Homeridae were a family, clan or professional lineage on the island of Chios claiming descent from the legendary Greek epic poet Homer.The origin of the name seems obvious: in classical Greek the word should mean "children of Homer". An analogous name, Asclepiadae, identified a clan or guild of...
(literally "children of Homer"). These certainly had an existence in the fifth and fourth centuries BC and certainly performed poems attributed to Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
. Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...
seems to count the Homeridae as rhapsodes; other sources do not specifically confirm this categorisation.