Aoidos

The Greek word aoidos (ἀοιδός; plural: aoidoi, ἀοιδοί) referred to a classical Greek singer. In modern Homeric scholarship, it is used by some as the technical term for a skilled oral epic poet in the tradition to which the Iliad and Odyssey are believed to belong (compare rhapsode).

Song and poetry in the Iliad and Odyssey

In classical Greek, the word aoidos 'singer', is an agent noun derived from the verb aeidein (ὰείδειν) or adein (ᾄδειν) 'to sing'. It occurs several times in varying forms in the Iliad and Odyssey in relation to poetry:

Iliad 18.490–496 (on the Shield of Achilles): a wedding song, hymenaios, with pipes, lyres, and dancing

Odyssey 23.133–135: a wedding song with dancing, led by the singer Phemius: there is no wedding but Odysseus wants to create the impression of festivity while he is killing the suitors

Iliad 18.567–572 (on the Shield of Achilles): a child sings and plays the lyre to accompany the vintage. The song is the linos

Iliad 18.593–606 (on the Shield of Achilles): young men and women take part in a singing-dance, molpe

Odyssey 8.250–385: young men and women take part in a molpe; Demodocus sings and plays the lyre; his song is about the love affair of Ares and Aphrodite

Iliad 22.391–393: Achilles' young warriors sing a paieon, a song of praise or self-praise, as they drag Hector's body back to their ships

Iliad 24.720–761: in Troy, singers lead the lament over Hector's body and women mourn after them; the three women who perform laments individually are Andromache, Hecuba and Helen

Iliad 19.301–338: in the Greek camp, over the body of Patroclus, Achilles sings first, then Briseis followed by the women, then Achilles again followed by the old men

Odyssey 24.58–62: in the Greek camp (as described by Agamemnon's ghost) the sea nymphs lament over Achilles's body and the Muses respond, followed by all the Greeks

Iliad 9.186–191: Achilles "pleases his mind and sings of the fame of men", accompanying himself on the lyre; his only audience is Patroclus

Odyssey 1.150–340: Phemius sings for the suitors, after dinner, a narrative song of the Return from Troy

Odyssey 8.73–75: Demodocus sings for Alcinous and his guests, after dinner, a narrative song of the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles

Odyssey 8.536–538: Demodocus begins to sing for Alcinous and his guests, after dinner, a narrative song of the Wooden Horse.

The profession of singer

In the world described in these poems writing is practically unknown (though its use is implied in one minor episode, the story of Bellerophontes); all poetry is "song", and poets are "singers". Later, in the fifth and fourth centuries, the performance of epic poetry was called rhapsodia, and its performer rhapsodos, but the word does not occur in the early epics or in contemporary lyric poetry, so it is unknown whether Hesiod and the poet(s) of the Iliad and Odyssey would have considered themselves rhapsodes (it has been argued by Walter Burkert, and is accepted by some recent scholars, that rhapsodos was by definition a performer of a fixed, written text and not a creative oral poet). It is not even known to what extent the makers of oral epic poetry were specialists. Phemius and Demodocus, in the Odyssey, are depicted performing non-epic as well as epic songs.

There was, however, certainly a profession of aoidos.