Rhapsoidos, prophetes, and hypokrites: A diachronic study of the performance of Homeric poetry in ancient Greece (Aristotle)

This thesis focuses on the rhapsode. I argue that one must study him diachronically, in relation to prophet, orator, and actor. For the classical period I center on Athens, whose Panathenaic festival was the preeminent venue for recitations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Athenian performance domains of rhapsodic recitation, dramatic acting, and oratorical delivery significantly influenced each other in ways that varied with time. Their affinity is not reducible to the universals of the performer-audience interaction, Indeed, early historical ties joined the rhapsode to the emerging actor, who borrowed even the label hypokrites from the Homeric performer. Like the rhapsode, who as mediating hermeneus 'revealed' the divine speech of the Muse to his audience, so, originally, the actor was viewed as explaining the song of the chorus. The hermeneutic dimension of rhapsodic performance derived from the kinship of mantic with epic poetry. This kinship also affected how cultural insiders viewed the poetic tradition: to it they attached a 'notional fixity,' as if the rhapsode always recited the 'same' poem, when in fact he recomposed his material anew in every performance. I argue, moreover, that the sophists, who invented oratory, arose in competition with the rhapsodes. A connection between orators and rhapsodes was acknowledged by Aristotle in his discussion of 'delivery' (hypokrisis) in Rhetoric III.1--12. Against previous scholars, I read the relationship between 'style' (lexis) and 'delivery' in the Rhetoric as one designed to capture Aristotle's concern with rhetoric's oral and auditory dimensions. The link between orators and rhapsodes was also recognized by Alkidamas' On the Sophists. In either case, this recognition occurs precisely when the orator's adoption of written drafts to aid his training and delivery is at issue. This coincidence implies that the cultural factors responsible for this development among speakers were also at work among rhapsodes. Therefore, I suggest that the fixation of the text of the Homeric poems was not the result of an act of dictation, but a gradual process driven by the changing performance practices of classical rhapsodes. A final direction of influence between the three performance domains, from actors to rhapsodes, was evident in the increasing theatricality of rhapsodic delivery. I trace this evolution towards the histrionic in the fourth century BC---especially during the times of Lykourgos and Demetrios of Phaleron---and among the homeristai of Hellenistic and later times. I end by considering the extant record---inscriptional and literary---about post-classical performances of epic poetry generally.