Plato’s Rhapsody and Homer’s Music: The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Nagy, Gregory. 2020. Plato's Rhapsody and Homer's Music: The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens. 2nd Edition (online). Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Hellenic Studies. Trustees for Harvard University, Foundation of the Hellenic World: Classical Inquiries. http://nrs.harvard.edu/ urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Platos_Rhapsody_and_Homers_Music.2020 Published Version https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/platos-rhapsody- and-homers-music-the-poetics-of-the-panathenaic-festival-in- classical-athens/ Citable link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37366728 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Classical Inquiries Editors: Angelia Hanhardt and Keith Stone Consultant for Images: Jill Curry Robbins Online Consultant: Noel Spencer About Classical Inquiries (CI ) is an online, rapid-publication project of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, devoted to sharing some of the latest thinking on the ancient world with researchers and the general public. 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Classical Inquiries Studies on the Ancient World from the Center for Hellenic Studies Home About People References The CI Poetry Project Home » By Gregory Nagy » Plato’s Rhapsody and Homer’s Music: The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens Share This Plato’s Rhapsody and Homer’s Music: The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens July 3, 2020 Posted By Gregory Nagy listed under By Gregory Nagy Comments off Second Edition online 2020, launched July 3, as a special issue in Classical Inquiries By Gregory Nagy A note, by the author, about the Second Edition The first edition of this book, a printed version, was published in 2002 by the Center for Hellenic Studies; that printed version has been replaced by a corrected online version, http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn- 3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Platos_Rhapsody_and_Homers_Music.2002. And that online version is now replaced here by this new online version, which is in effect a second edition, to be listed as Nagy 2020 in Classical Inquiries (CI) is an online, bibliographies: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn- rapid-publication project of Harvard’s 3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Platos_Rhapsody_and_Homers_Music.2020. This second edition, launched Center for Hellenic Studies, devoted to 2020.07.03 in Classical Inquiries, makes it possible to add annotations to my online text—annotations that sharing some of the latest thinking on can be viewed as a form of open peer review. That is to say, the text of this second edition of Plato’s the ancient world with researchers and Rhapsody can be annotated by contributors who are invited to make comments on my argumentation. The the general public. procedures of annotating, in which I too hope to participate by occasionally making my own additional annotations to my text, can be set by the editorial team of Classical Inquiries. In this second edition, the Editor page-numbers of the first edition are indicated within braces (for example, “{3|4}” indicates the break between pages 3 and 4). This way, the numbering of the pages and footnotes as found in-the original Keith DeStone printed text can be retained. Also retained in this new online version is the old bibliography of the first kdestone at chs.harvard.edu edition, supplemented by new entries arising from new bibliography as noted in the annotations.[0] Editor: Poetry Project Natasha Bershadsky nbershadsky at chs.harvard.edu Assistant Editor Angelia Hanhardt Web Producer Noel Spencer Consultant for Images Jill Curry Robbins Search Subscribe Now! Subscribe to this site to receive email updates about the latest research—just one or two notices per week. EU/EEA Privacy Disclosures Homer and his Muse (1814). Engraving by Thomas Baxter (1782– Email Address 1821), from An illustration of the Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman costume: in forty outlines with descriptions. Image via Flickr, under a CC BY 2.0 license. Subscribe Now Online Introduction 0§1. There is a pervasive historical connection, I argue in this book, between two evolving institutions— Homeric poetry and the festival of the Panathenaia in the city of Athens. The testimony of Plato will be crucial to the argumentation. 0§2. Two premises are involved. The first is this: synchronic approaches to Homer cannot succeed without the integration of diachronic approaches, just as diachronic approaches cannot succeed without the integration of the synchronic. The second premise is this: synchronic analysis of Homeric poetry can be successful only when that poetry is viewed as a system rather than a text. Short-hand, I refer to the system in question simply as “Homeric poetry.” Testing these premises, I argue against the assumption that the Homeric text of the Iliad and Odyssey, as reconstituted in various editions both ancient and modern, is a single synchronic reality. In other words, I hold that the Homeric text (or texts) is not the same thing as Homeric poetry.[1] 0§3. In using the terms synchronic and diachronic, I follow a linguistic distinction made by Ferdinand de Saussure.[2]For Saussure, synchrony and diachrony designate respectively a current state of a language and a phase in its evolution.[3] I draw attention to Saussure’s linking of diachrony and evolution, a link that proves to be crucial for understanding the medium that is central to this study, Homeric poetry. In my publications, I have worked out a general “evolutionary model” for the oral traditions that shaped Homeric poetry.[4] This {3|4} theory differs from various specific “dictation theories,”[5] not to mention various general assumptions about a “writing Homer.”[6] In terms of my evolutionary model, the “making” of Homeric poetry needs to be seen diachronically as well as synchronically, if we follow Saussure’s sense of diachrony. 0§4. Here I propose to add two restrictions to my use of synchronic and diachronic. First, I apply these terms consistently from the standpoint of an outsider who is thinking about a given system, not from the standpoint of an insider who is thinking within that system.[7] Second, I use diachronic and synchronic not as synonyms for historical and current respectively. Diachrony refers to the potential for evolution in a structure. History is not restricted to phenomena that are structurally predictable.[8] 0§5. With these working definitions in place, I return to my point: a purely synchronic perspective is insufficient for reading Homer. The transmitted texts of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey cannot be reduced Top Posts & Pages to single speech-events, self-contained in one time and one place, as if we had direct access to actual recordings of the language of Homer.[9] Not just the text but even the language of Homeric poetry resists a purely synchronic approach. The Homeric grammar and lexicon do not and cannot belong to any one time, any one place: in a word, they defy synchronic analysis.[10] In this connection, we need to confront Seven Greek tragedies, seven the general phenomenon of meaning in the media of oral poetics. On {4|5} the basis of my own cumulative simple overviews work, I am convinced that meaning by way of reference in oral poetics needs to be seen diachronically as well as synchronically: each occurrence of a theme (on the level of content) or of a formula (on the level of The Last Words of Socrates at form) in a given composition-in-performance refers not only to its immediate context but also to all other the Place where he Died analogous contexts remembered by the performer or by any member of the audience.[11] A variation on the theme of 0§6. From a purely synchronic point of view, then, where can we find a sample of Homeric poetry, if not in Athena: The Palladium, as the text of any single edition? The ideal sample would be an attested transcript of a “live” performance, which would amount to the recording of a “live” recomposition-in-performance. Of course, such a sample is viewed by Pausanias on the for us an impossibility.