RHAPSODY *4Na) was a poem sung by a rhapsodist, generally applied to detached parts of the Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. But the word rhapsodist properly signifies one who sews or fastens things together ; and it was specially applied to those who arranged or are supposed to have arranged the parts of the Homeric poems and of other old poems, so as to make one entire work of them, and who went about from place to place•to sing and recite these poems. In modern use the word has an entirely different signification. A. rhapsody is a discourse or writing in which the parts have no necessary dependence on each other. • ItHEA, one of the divinities of ancient Greece and Rome. Rhea was the daughter of Uranus and Gina, and the sister and wife of Kronos, by whom she had several children who were successively swallowed by Kronos, till mho succeeded In imposing on him a stone for the new-born Zeus. [KRONOR; ZEUS.] Rhea became early identified with the Phrygian mother•goddess Cybele • and also by some of the Greek races, with her daughter DEMETER. Besides the names Rhea, Cybele, &c,, she was called "the mother of the gods," "the great mother," &o. The original seat of her worship appears to have
been Crete, but it soon spread through Greece. As the great goddess of the eastern nations, her worship was however far more widely extended. The rites of Rhea were in some places mingled with those of Dionysos ; and her priests, the Corybantee, leapt, danced, sung, and per formed various frenzied orgies in the wilds of Phrygia. As the mother of Jupiter, under the name of Ups, she was worshipped by the Romans from the earliest times. Her festival at Rome was called the alegalesia ; her priests were eunuchs, and named Galli The oak and the lion were sacred to her. In Greek art Rhea is represented wearing a crown with towers, and she carries in her hand a key or a branch. Site is usually seated on a throne with lions beside her; or in a ear drawn by lions ; sometimes she is riding on a lion ; in bassi relievi, &c., she is sometimes seen attended by dancing Corybantcs with cymbals.
ItHEADIC ACID. [Parevenic Amp.]