Nor will it be found, after all, that the effort of memory required, either from bards or rhapsodes, even for the longest of these old Epic poems,—though doubtless great, was at all superhuman. Taking the case with reference to the entire Iliad and Odyssey, we know that there were educated gentlemen at Athens who could repeat both poems by heart:[253] but in the professional recitations, we are not to imagine that the same person did go through the whole: the recitation was essentially a joint undertaking, and the rhapsodes who visited a festival would naturally understand among themselves which part of the poem should devolve upon each particular individual. Under such circumstances, and with such means of preparation beforehand, the quantity of verse which a rhapsode could deliver would be measured, not so much by the exhaustion of his memory, as by the physical sufficiency of his voice, having reference to the sonorous, emphatic, and rhythmical pronunciation required from him.[254] [253] Xenoph. Sympos. iii. 5. Compare, respecting the laborious discipline of the Gallic Druids, and the number of unwritten verses which they retained in their memories, Cæsar, B. G. vi. 14; Mela. iii. 2; also Wolf, Prolegg. s. xxiv. and Herod. ii. 77, about the prodigious memory of the Egyptian priests at Heliopolis. I transcribe, from the interesting Discours of M. Fauriel (prefixed to his Chants Populaires de la Grèce Moderne, Paris 1824), a few particulars respecting the number, the mnemonic power, and the popularity of those itinerant singers or rhapsodes who frequent the festivals or _paneghyris_ of modern Greece: it is curious to learn that this profession is habitually exercised by _blind_ men (p. xc. _seq._).