These words have provoked multiplied criticisms from all the learned men who have touched upon the theory of the Homeric poems,—to determine what was the practice which Solon found existing, and what was the change which he introduced. Our information is too scanty to pretend to certainty, but I think the explanation of Hermann the most satisfactory (“Quid sit ὑποβολὴ et ὑποβλήδεν.”—Opuscula, tom. v. p. 300, tom. vii. p. 162).
Ὑποβολεὺς is the technical term for the prompter at a theatrical representation (Plutarch, Præcept. gerend. Reip. p. 813); ὑποβολὴ and ὑποβάλλειν have corresponding meanings, of aiding the memory of a speaker and keeping him in accordance with a certain standard, in possession of the prompter: see the words ἐξ ὑποβολῆς, Xenophon. Cyropæd. iii. 3, 37. Ὑποβολὴ, therefore, has no necessary connection with a series of rhapsodes, but would apply just as much to one alone; although it happens in this case to be brought to bear upon several in succession. Ὑπόληψις, again, means “the taking up in succession of one rhapsode by another:” though the two words, therefore, have not the same meaning, yet the proceeding described in the two passages, in reference both to Solôn and Hipparchus, appears to be in substance the same,—i. e. to insure, by compulsory supervision, a correct and orderly recitation by the successive rhapsodes who went through the different parts of the poem.
There is good reason to conclude from this passage that the rhapsodes before Solôn were guilty both of negligence and of omission in their recital of Homer, but no reason to imagine either that they transposed the books, or that the legitimate order was not previously recognized.
The appointment of a systematic ὑποβολεὺς, or prompter, plainly indicates the existence of complete manuscripts.
The direction of Solôn, that Homer should be rhapsodized under the security of a prompter with his manuscript, appears just the same as that of the orator Lykurgus in reference to Æschylus, Sophoklês, and Euripidês (Pseudo-Plutarch. Vit. x. Rhetor. Lycurgi Vit.)—εἰσήνεγκε δὲ καὶ νόμους—ὡς χαλκᾶς εἰκόνας ἀναθεῖναι τῶν ποιητῶν Αἰσχύλου, Σοφοκλέους, Εὐριπίδου, καὶ τὰς τραγῳδίας αὐτῶν ἐν κοινῷ γραψαμένους φυλάττειν, καὶ τὸν τῆς πόλεως γραμματέα παραναγιγνώσκειν τοῖς ὑποκρινομένοις· οὐ γὰρ ἐξῆν αὐτὰς (ἄλλως) ὑποκρίνεσθαι. The word ἄλλως, which occurs last but one, is introduced by the conjecture of Grysar, who has cited and explained the above passage of the Pseudo-Plutarch in a valuable dissertation—De Græcorum Tragœdiâ, qualis fuit circa tempora Demosthenis (Cologne, 1830). All the critics admit the text as it now stands to be unintelligible, and various corrections have been proposed, among which that of Grysar seems the best. From his Dissertation, I transcribe the following passage, which illustrates the rhapsodizing of Homer ἐξ ὑποβολῆς:—
“Quum histriones fabulis interpolandis ægre abstinerent, Lycurgus legem supra indicatam eo tulit consilio, ut recitationes histrionum cum publico illo exemplo omnino congruas redderet. Quod ut assequeretur, constituit, ut dum fabulæ in scenâ recitarentur, scriba publicus simul exemplum civitatis inspiceret, juxta sive in theatro sive in postscenio sedens. Hæc enim verbi παραναγιγνώσκειν est significatio, posita præcipue in præpositione παρὰ, ut idem sit, quod contra sive juxta legere; id quod faciunt ii, qui lecta ab altero vel recitata cum suis conferre cupiunt.” (Grysar, p. 7.)
[265] That the Iliad or Odyssey were ever recited with all the parts entire, at any time anterior to Solôn, is a point which Ritschl denies (Die Alexandrin. Bibliothek, pp. 67-70). He thinks that before Solôn, they were always recited in parts, and without any fixed order among the parts. Nor did Solôn determine (as he thinks) the order of the parts: he only checked the license of the rhapsodes as to the recitation of the separate books: it was Pesistratus, who, with the help of Onomakritus and others, first settled the order of the parts and bound each poem into a whole, with some corrections and interpolations. Nevertheless, he admits that the parts were originally composed by the same poet, and adapted to form a whole amongst each other: but this primitive entireness (he asserts) was only maintained as a sort of traditional belief, never realized in recitation, and never reduced to an obvious, unequivocal, and permanent fact,—until the time of Peisistratus.
There is no sufficient ground, I think, for denying all entire recitation previous to Solôn, and we only interpose a new difficulty, both grave and gratuitous, by doing so.
[266] The Æthiopis of Arktinus contained nine thousand one hundred verses, as we learn from the Tabula Iliaca: yet Proklus assigns to it only four books. The Ilias Minor had four books, the Cyprian Verses eleven, though we do not know the number of lines in either.
Nitzsch states it as a certain matter of fact, that Arktinus recited his own poem alone, though it was too long to admit of his doing so without interruption. (See his Vorrede to the second vol. of the Odyssey, p. xxiv.) There is no evidence for this assertion, and it appears to me highly improbable.