Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle. Richard Leo Enos
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centuries and indicates the prestige they enjoyed. Moreover, the extant epigraphical fragments containing lists of contest participants provide vital evidence indicating their influence and fame. These fragments survive primarily as chronicles of victors at literary and oratorical festivals. Evidence from these sources indicates a number of noteworthy facts. Rhapsodes did not fall into disrepute after Plato but continued to thrive as recognized artists. Records from Amphiareion, for example, clearly show that Rhapsodes shared honors with tragic and comic actors as well as musicians during the Roman domination of Greece (see Enos, “Art”; Petracos 13, 36–41, 65). Training in the rhapsodic art as a formal study is evident through the third Christian century (SIG vol. one, no. 389 [8] duo, no. 424 [10], no. 489 [12], no. 509 [6]; vol. two, no. 711L[32], no. 736 [42.150.165]; vol. three, no. 958[36], no. 959 [9]; OCD 920). There are even indications at this late date that rhapsodic contests were offered at a wide range of places, varying from contests for children to events held on Chios (SIG, vol. three, nos. 958, 959).
Although Rhapsodes continued to participate in contests, their function as linguistic guardians of Homeric pronunciation and scholarship diminished. As centuries passed, the Greek language continued to develop, alter, and be influenced by numerous dialects which gradually eroded the oral characteristics of the language from Homeric Greek and made reconstruction increasingly more difficult (Maas 3–4). Efforts by Rhapsodes to maintain the “correct” pronunciation, intonation, accent, and rhythm of Homeric Greek were doomed to failure. From the first century BCE onward, the quantitative metre that characterized Homeric oral interpretation became further removed from the rhythmical structure of the language. In addition, for some unknown reason, no Greek writer of any importance seems to have concerned himself with metric studies (Maas 3–5).
In a futile attempt to preserve the pronunciation of Homeric Greek, scholars eventually adopted a written system of diacritical notations (stress symbols) to indicate vocal quality and quantity. In spite of these efforts, W. Sidney Allen claims that by “Alexandrian times, as knowledge of the earlier language declined, and as Greek came to be taught as a foreign language, the need was felt for marking such features in classical texts in cases where ambiguity might otherwise result” (Accent and Rhythm 4). Second century BCE Alexandrian scholars, such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, and even Byzantine scholars, such as Aristophanes, undertook lexicographical studies to codify and thereby preserve Homeric pronunciation with markings and grammatical explanations (see Pfeiffer 174–82; Kindstrand). Written explanations, however, failed to preserve phonetic vocal qualities between vowels—a distinction which is the essence of precise interpretation of the Homeric tongue. Moreover, as quantitative distinctions between vowels continued to become increasingly uncertain, the placing of word accents at regular positions in lines began to occur (Maas 15). Even into the early Christian centuries, Rhapsodes persisted in their use of the ancient Homeric tongue, but their pronunciation was far removed from the original Greek vernacular that had been altered by centuries of use and modification. By 400 BCE, “correct” pronunciation was all but nonexistent, and the rhapsodic tradition had deteriorated to such an extent that individuals no longer read according to sounds intuitively familiar to listeners but rather according to artificially contrived stress accents on each written word (Maas 13–15).
Eventually, Homeric metre was dictated by structure not tonal quality. The beneficiaries of the rhapsodic tradition were left with only the form of their language and not the quantitative (syllables based on duration of sound rather than stress) sound that produced it. Efforts of Rhapsodes to preserve the oral nature of Homeric Greek, both in practice and also in the theoretical development of notational systems, justifies their association with the history of rhetoric—even if that association reveals nothing more than the historical evolution of thought which preceded the “discovery” of rhetoric so frequently credited to Corax and Tisias.
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