Rhapsodes as a class in Greece. They competed for prizes at the festivals. Ion has been triumphant.
I hold it to be genuine, and it may be comparatively early; but I see no ground for the disparaging criticism which has often been applied to it. The personage whom it introduces to us as subjected to the cross-examination of Sokrates is a rhapsode of celebrity; one among a class of artists at that time both useful and esteemed. They recited or sang,[3] with appropriate accent and gesture, the compositions of Homer and of other epic poets: thus serving to the Grecian epic, the same purpose as the actors served to the dramatic, and the harp-singers (κιθαρῳδοὶ) to the lyric. There were various solemn festivals such as that of Æsculapius at Epidaurus, and (most especially) the Panathenæa at Athens, where prizes were awarded for the competition of the rhapsodes. Ion is described as having competed triumphantly in the festival at Epidaurus, and carried off the first prize. He appeared there in a splendid costume, crowned with a golden wreath, amidst a crowd which is described as containing more than 20,000 persons.[4]
[3] The word ᾄδειν is in this very dialogue (532 D, 535 A) applied to the rhapsoding of Ion.
[4] Plato, Ion, 535 D.
Functions of the Rhapsodes. Recitation — Exposition of the poets. Arbitrary exposition of the poets was then frequent.
Much of the acquaintance of cultivated Greeks with Homer and the other epic poets was both acquired and maintained through such rhapsodes; the best of whom contended at the festivals, while others, less highly gifted as to vocal power and gesticulation, gave separate declamations and lectures of their own, and even private lessons to individuals.[5] Euthydêmus, in one of the Xenophontic conversations with Sokrates, and Antisthenes in the Xenophontic Symposion, are made to declare that the rhapsodes as a class were extremely silly. This, if true at all, can apply only to the expositions and comments with which they accompanied their recital of Homer and other poets. Moreover we cannot reasonably set it down (though some modern critics do so) as so much incontestable truth: we must consider it as an opinion delivered by one of the speakers in the conversation, but not necessarily well founded.[6] Unquestionably, the comments made upon Homer (both in that age and afterwards) were often fanciful and misleading. Metrodorus, Anaxagoras, and others, resolved the Homeric narrative into various allegories, physical, ethical, and theological: and most men who had an opinion to defend, rejoiced to be able to support or enforce it by some passages of Homer, well or ill-explained — just as texts of the Bible are quoted in modern times. In this manner, Homer was pressed into the service of every disputant; and the Homeric poems were presented as containing, or at least as implying, doctrines quite foreign to the age in which they were composed.[7]
[5] Xen. Sympos. iii. 6. Nikêratus says that he heard the rhapsodes nearly every day. He professes to be able to repeat both the Iliad and the Odyssey from memory.
[6] Xen. Mem. iv. 2, 10; Sympos. iii. 6; Plato, Ion, 530 E.
Steinhart cites this judgment about the rhapsodes as if it had been pronounced by the Xenophontic Sokrates himself, which is not the fact (Steinhart, Einleitung p. 3).
[7] Diogenes Laert. ii. 11; Nitzsch, Die Heldensage des Griechen, pp. 74-78; Lobeck, Agloaphamus, p. 157.