The thirty-three anonymous Homeric Hymns celebrating individual gods are a collection of ancient Greek hymns, "Homeric" in the sense that they employ the same
dactylic hexameter as the Iliad and
Odyssey and are couched in the same dialect. They were attributed to Homer himself in Antiquity—from the earliest written reference to them, Thucydides (iii.104)—and the label has stuck.
The oldest of them were written in the seventh century BCE, somewhat later than Hesiod and the
usually accepted date for the writing down of the Homeric epics. This still places the older Homeric hymns among the oldest
monuments of Greek literature; but although most of them were composed in the seventh
and sixth centuries, a few may be Hellenistic, and the Hymn to Ares
might be a late pagan work, inserted when it was observed that a hymn to Ares was lacking. It has been suggested that the Hymn
to Apollo, attributed by an ancient source to Cynaethus of Chios (a member of the
Homeridae), was composed in 522 BCE for performance at the unusual double festival held by
Polycrates of Samos to honour Apollo of Delos and of
Delphi.[1]
The hymns, which must be the remains of a once more strongly represented genre, vary widely in length, some being as brief as
three or four lines, while others are in excess of five hundred lines. The long ones comprise an invocation, praise, and
narrative, sometimes quite extended. In the briefest ones, the narrative element is lacking. Most surviving Byzantine manuscripts
begin with the third Hymn. A chance discovery in Moscow, 1777, recovered the two hymns that open the collection, the fragmentary
To Dionysus and To Demeter in a single fifteenth century manuscript. Some at least of the shorter ones may be
excerpts that have omitted the narrative central section, preserving only the useful invocation and introduction,[2]
The thirty-three hymns praise most of the major gods of Greek mythology; at least the
shorter ones may have served as preludes to the recitation of epic verse at festivals by professional rhapsodes: often the singer concludes by saying that now he will pass to another song. A thirty-fourth, To
Hosts is not a hymn, but a reminder that hospitality is a sacred duty enjoined by the gods, a pointed reminder when coming
from a professional rhapsode.
Gods who have Homeric hymns dedicated to them include:
A recent translation joining several currently in print, with full introduction and notes, setting the hymns in their context
of folklore, cult and geography, offering Near Eastern parallels, is Diane Rayor, The Homeric Hymns : A Translation, with
Introduction and Notes (2004).
Notes
- ^ Walter Burkert, 'Kynaithos,
Polycrates and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo' in Arktouros: Hellenic studies presented to B. M. W. Knox ed. G. W. Bowersock,
W. Burkert, M. C. J. Putnam (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1979) pp. 53-62.
- ^ "husks, introductions and conclusions from which the narrative core has
been removed" as Robert Parker calls them, "The 'Hymn to Demeter' and the 'Homeric Hymns'" Greece & Rome 2nd Series
38.1 (April 1991, pp. 1-17) p. 1. Parker notes that, for instance, Hymn 18 preserves a version of the beginning and end of
the Hymn to Hermes.
External links
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