These rhapsodes, the successors of the primitive aœdi, or bards, seem to have been distinguished from them by the discontinuance of all musical accompaniment. Originally, the bard sung, enlivening the song with occasional touches of the simple four-stringed harp: his successor, the rhapsode, recited, holding in his hand nothing but a branch of laurel and depending for effect upon voice and manner,—a species of musical and rhythmical declamation,[247] which gradually increased in vehement emphasis and gesticulation until it approached to that of the dramatic actor. At what time this change took place, or whether the two different modes of enunciating the ancient epic may for a certain period have gone on simultaneously, we have no means of determining. Hesiod receives from the Muse a branch of laurel, as a token of his ordination into their service, which marks him for a rhapsode; while the ancient bard with his harp is still recognized in the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo, as efficient and popular at the Panionic festivals in the island of Delos.[248] Perhaps the improvements made in the harp, to which three strings, in addition to the original four, were attached by Terpander (B. C. 660), and the growing complication of instrumental music generally, may have contributed to discredit the primitive accompaniment, and thus to promote the practice of recital: the story, that Terpander himself composed music, not only for hexameter poems of his own, but also for those of Homer, seems to indicate that the music which preceded him was ceasing to find favor.[249] By whatever steps the change from the bard to the rhapsode took place, certain it is that before the time of Solôn, the latter was the recognized and exclusive organ of the old Epic; sometimes in short fragments before private companies, by single rhapsodes,—sometimes several rhapsodes in continuous succession at a public festival. [247] Aristotel. Poetic. c. 47; Welcker, Der Episch. Kyklos; Ueber den Vortrag der Homerischen Gedichte, pp. 340-406, which collects all the facts respecting the aœdi and the rhapsodes. Unfortunately, the ascertained points are very few. The laurel branch in the hand of the singer or reciter (for the two expressions are often confounded) seems to have been peculiar to the recitation of Homer and Hesiod (Hesiod, Theog. 30: Schol. ad Aristophan. Nub. 1367. Pausan. x. 7, 2). “Poemata omne genus (says Apuleius, Florid. p. 122, Bipont.) apta _virgæ_, lyræ, socco, cothurno.” Not only Homer and Hesiod, but also Archilochus, were recited by rhapsodes (Athenæ, xii. 620; also Plato, Legg. ii. p. 658). Consult, besides, Nitzsch, De Historiâ Homeri, Fascic. 2, p. 114, _seq._, respecting the rhapsodes; and O. Müller, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. iv. s. 3.