The etymology of ῥαψῳδὸς is a disputed point: Welcker traces it to ῥάβδος, most critics derive it from ῥάπτειν ἀοιδὴν, which O. Müller explains “to denote the coupling together of verses without any considerable divisions or pauses,—the even, unbroken, continuous flow of the epic poem,” as contrasted with the strophic or choric periods (l. c.).
[248] Homer, Hymn to Apoll. 170. The κίθαρις, ἀοιδὴ, ὀρχηθμὸς, are constantly put together in that hymn: evidently, the instrumental accompaniment was essential to the hymns at the Ionic festival. Compare also the Hymn to Hermês (430), where the function ascribed to the Muses can hardly be understood to include non-musical recitation. The Hymn to Hermês is more recent than Terpander, inasmuch as it mentions the seven strings of the lyre, v. 50.
[249] Terpander,—see Plutarch, de Musicâ, c. 3-4; the facts respecting him are collected in Plehn’s Lesbiaca, pp. 140-160; but very little can be authenticated.
Stesander at the Pythian festivals sang the Homeric battles, with a harp accompaniment of his own composition (Athenæ. xiv. p. 638).
The principal testimonies respecting the rhapsodizing of the Homeric poems at Athens, chiefly at the Panathenaic festival, are Isokratês, Panegyric. p. 74; Lycurgus contra Leocrat. p. 161; Plato, Hipparch. p. 228; Diogen. Laërt. Vit. Solon. i. 57.
Inscriptions attest that rhapsodizing continued in great esteem, down to a late period of the historical age, both at Chios and Teôs, especially the former: it was the subject of competition by trained youth, and of prizes for the victor, at periodical religious solemnities: see Corp. Inscript. Boeckh, No. 2214-3088.
[250] Knight, Prolegom. Hom. c. xxxviii-xl. “Haud tamen ullum Homericorum carminum exemplar Pisistrati seculo antiquius extitisse, aut sexcentesimo prius anno ante C. N. scriptum fuisse, facile credam: rara enim et perdifficilis erat iis temporibus scriptura ob penuriam materiæ scribendo idoneæ, quum literas aut lapidibus exarare, aut tabulis ligneis aut laminis metalli alicujus insculpere oporteret.... Atque ideo memoriter retenta sunt, et hæc et alia veterum poetarum carmina, et per urbes et vicos et in principum virorum ædibus, decantata a rhapsodis. Neque mirandum est, ea per tot sæcula sic integra conservata esse, quoniam—per eos tradita erant, qui ab omnibus Græciæ et coloniarum regibus et civitatibus mercede satis amplâ conducti, omnia sua studia in iis ediscendis, retinendis, et rite recitandis, conferebant.” Compare Wolf, Prolegom. xxiv-xxv.
The evidences of early writing among the Greeks, and of written poems even anterior to Homer, may be seen collected in Kreuser (Vorfragen ueber Homeros, pp. 127-159, Frankfort, 1828). His proofs appear to me altogether inconclusive. Nitzsch maintains the same opinion (Histor. Homeri, Fasc. i. sect. xi. xvii. xviii.),—in my opinion, not more successfully: nor does Franz (Epigraphicê Græc. Introd. s. iv.) produce any new arguments.
I do not quite subscribe to Mr. Knight’s language, when he says that there is nothing wonderful in the long preservation of the Homeric poems unwritten. It is enough to maintain that the existence, and practical use of long manuscripts, by all the rhapsodes, under the condition and circumstances of the 8th and 9th centuries among the Greeks, would be a greater wonder.
[251] See this argument strongly put by Nitzsch, in the prefatory remarks at the beginning of his second volume of Commentaries on the Odyssey (pp. x-xxix). He takes great pains to discard all idea that the poems were written in order to be read. To the same purpose, Franz (Epigraphicê Græc. Introd. p. 32), who adopts Nitzsch’s positions,—“Audituris enim, non lecturis, carmina parabant.”