RHAPSODISTS, in Antiquity, persons who made a business of singing pieces of Homer's poems.

(A) Avatar means the descent of the deity in his capacity of preserver. The three first of these descents relate to some stupendous convulsion of our globe from the fountains of the deep, and the fourth exhibits the miraculous punishment of pride and impiety, appearing to refer to the deluge. Three of the others were ordained for the overthrow of tyrants or giants. Of these Avatars, we have mentioned in the text that Rama is the eighth; Buddha, who appears to have been a reformer of the doctrines contained in Vedas, is the ninth: the tenth Avatar, we are told, is yet to come, and is expected to appear mounted (like the crowned conqueror in the Apocalypse) on a white horse, with a scimitar blazing like a comet, to mow down all incorrigible and impenitent offenders who shall then be on the earth.

Vol. XVII. Part II. RHEA poems. It has been said, that the Rhapsodi were clothed in red when they sung the Iliad, and in blue when they sang the Odyssey. They performed on the theatres, and sometimes strove for prizes in contests of poetry, singing, &c. After the two antagonists had finished their parts, the two pieces or papers they were written in were soon joined together again: whence the name, viz. from ῥαπτός, συν, and σύν, canticum; but there seem to have been other Rhapsodi of more antiquity than these people, who composed heroic poems or songs in praise of heroes and great men, and sung their own compositions from town to town for a livelihood; of which profession Homer himself is said to have been. See BARD.