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ode Terpander, just as the rhapsodes' hymns came to be collectively ascribed to Homer. They were presumably for festival use. |
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Offering prizes for the best singer or instrumentalist was a natural development. Already in the late eighth century, at the funeral games held in honour of the Chalcidian king Amphidamas, there was a contest for performers of hexameter song, which Hesiod won.24 In one of the shorter 'Homeric' hymns the poet prays to Aphrodite for 'victory in this competition'.25 At Athens, probably from about 525 BC, relays of rhapsodes were organized into performing the complete Iliad and Odyssey at the Great Panathenaea held every four years.26 Before that, no doubt, they had performed portions of these and other epics haphazardly, though on a competitive basis.27 In the fifth century there were competitions for rhapsodes at the festival of Asclepius at Epidaurus.28 There must have been many opportunities for hearing epic song other than at festivals, but festivals will have been a common setting. |
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In the seventh century, competitions for citharodes are attested for the octennial Pythian festival at Delphi and for the Karneia at Sparta. We know that competitors came from far and wide. Early in the sixth century the Pythian festival was augmented by further musical events. These too attracted performers, and a public, from many parts of Greece. Twenty years later the Panathenaea at Athens underwent a similar reorganization. There too citharodes, aulodes, and auletes competed for prizes; the vase-painters depict them standing in turn on a podium before a seated judge.29 |
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This section may be concluded with a short account of the musical elements in three major festivals, two Athenian and one Laconian. |
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First, the City Dionysia of Athens, which has already been mentioned more than once. As a preliminary, the statue of Dionysus was taken out to a suburb so that the god's mythical entry into Athens |
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24 Hes. Op. 654-9. |
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25Hymn. Horn. 6. 19. In the preceding lines he has described Aphrodite's occupation of Cyprus, and we may guess that the occasion of the hymn was one of the Cyprian festivals of Aphrodite, such as the panegyris at Old Paphos (Strab. 14.6.3 p. 683; M.P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipzig, 1906), 364f.). |
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26 Pl. Hipparch. 228b, Lycurg. Leoc. 102. |
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27 Cf. J. A. Davison, JHS 78 (1958), 38f. = From Archilochus to Pindar (London, 1968), 58-60. |
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28 PI. Ion 530a. |
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29 See Pl. 4; Wegner, Musikleben, 108f., 189f., 211, and pl. 7a, b, 18; Davison, JHS 78 (1958), 37, 42, and 82 (1962), 141f. = From Archilochus to Pindar, 55f., 64-8. |
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