Homer and Rhapsodic Competition in Performance

Abstract

We have evidence of a variety of rhapsodic games, which can be used to argue that rhapsodes were competent at many levels of poetic performance: they could, for instance, competitively recite memorized verses, improvise verses on the spot for elaboration or embellishment, and take up and leave off the narrative wherever they saw fit, all the while setting metrical and thematic challenges for their adversaries and attempting to win the audience to their side. These performance tactics comport in many respects with what we know about the quadrennial, greater Panathenaia, which unlike any other festival furnishes us with actual "rules" for rhapsodic performances.

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