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The Homeric Hymns (Ancient Greek: Ὁμηρικοὶ ὕμνοι, romanized: Homērikoì húmnoi) are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns written in dactylic hexameter, each of which is dedicated to an individual god in the Ancient Greek pantheon. The hymns are all formally anonymous, although they were occasionally attributed to Homer in antiquity.

Authorship and Dating

While early references to the Hymns, such as Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War^ , attributes the Hymn to Apollo to Homer, doubts began to form even in antiquity, beginning with the grammarians at the Library of Alexandria, and the modern scholarly consensus is that they were not written during the lifetime of Homer himself.

Although it may not be possible to assign an exact or absolute date the composition of the Hymns, the general assumption is that they were all composed later than the works of Homer and Hesiod, which are typically dated to the late 8th or early 7th century BC. This assumption has been validated by subsequent linguistic analysis. The oldest of the hymns, Hymn 5, to Aphrodite, was probably written in the seventh century BCE. The majority of the poems have been dated to between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE. The main exception is Hymn 8, to Ares, which contains Neoplatonic characteristics such as identification of Ares with Mars, and has been often attributed to Proclus, but generally cannot have been written before the 3rd century AD.

Style

Hymn Number Dedication Length Hymn 6 "To Aphrodite" 21 lines Hymn 8 "To Ares" 17 lines Hymn 9 "To Artemis" 9 lines Hymn 10 "To Aphrodite" 6 lines Hymn 11 "To Athena" 5 lines Hymn 12 "To Hera" 5 lines Hymn 13 "To Demeter" 3 lines Hymn 14 "To the mother of the gods" (Rhea/Cybele) 6 lines Hymn 15 "To Heracles with the heart of a lion" 9 lines Hymn 16 "To Asclepius" 5 lines Hymn 17 "To the Dioscuri" 5 lines Hymn 18 "To Hermes" 12 lines Hymn 20 "To Hephaestus" 8 lines Hymn 21 "To Apollo" 5 lines Hymn 22 "To Poseidon" 7 lines Hymn 23 "To Zeus" 4 lines Hymn 24 "To Hestia" 5 lines Hymn 25 "To the Muses and Apollo" 7 lines Hymn 26 "To Dionysus" 13 lines Hymn 27 "To Artemis" 22 lines Hymn 28 "To Athena" 18 lines Hymn 29 "To Hestia" 13 lines Hymn 30 "To Gaia, mother of all" 19 lines Hymn 31 "To Helios" 20 lines Hymn 32 "To Selene" 20 lines Hymn 33 "To the Dioscuri" 19 lines

The thirty-three hymns praise most of the major gods of Greek religion; The hymns are all composed in dactylic hexameter, the same meter used in the Iliad and the Odyssey, with which they share many similar formulas and are couched in the same dialect.

The hymns vary widely in length, some being as brief as three or four lines, while others are in excess of five hundred lines. The long and medium-length narrative hymns, Hymns 1-5, 7, and 19, comprise an invocation, praise, and narrative, sometimes quite extended. Robert Parker characterizes the short hymns as "husks, introductions and conclusions from which the narrative core has been removed" noting that, for instance, Hymn 18 preserves a version of the beginning and end of the Hymn to Hermes. The short hymns may have served as preludes to the recitation of epic verse at festivals by professional rhapsodes.

Narrative Hymns

The fragmentary first hymn relates a similar narrative to that of the Dionysian Mysteries celebrated by the Cult of Dionysus

First Hymn to Dionysus

The first hymn of the collection, dedicated to Dionysus, is only extant in a very fragmentary form - approximately 63 lines or parts of lines survive out of an estimated 400 original lines..

Themes

From the remaining fragments, the plot of the narrative portion of the hymn can be identified as the birth of Dionysus.

Hades abducting Persephone, wall painting in the small royal tomb at Verghina (Vergina), Macedonia

Hymn to Demeter

Themes

Faulkner characterizes this hymn as the "most Hesiodic" of the Homeric Hymns.

Hymn to Apollo

Themes

The hymn to Apollo is divided into two sections, a Delian section (lines 1-181) and a Pythian section (lines 182-546). There is generally no consensus among scholars over whether or not this means that the poem was originally two separate poems.

Birth of Apollo and Diana

The Delian section contains the birth of Apollo on Delos

The first part is generally dated to the early 7th century BC, and scholars who do not consider the second part to have been composed at the same time consider it to have been composed some time after 580's BCE, based on potential references in that part to the First Sacred War in 595-585 BCE. Walter Burkert has suggested that the Hymn to Apollo reached it's final combined form in 522 BCE, for performance at the unusual double festival held by Polycrates of Samos to honor Apollo of Delos and of Delphi, based on an attribution in scholia to Cynaethus of Chios, a member of the Homeridae.

The second half of the Hymn to Apollo recounts the legend of Apollo descending to kill Python

The Pythian section contains the

Hymn to Aphrodite

Themes

North African Roman mosaic, dated 2nd century AD: Panther-Dionysus scatters the pirates, who are changed to dolphins, except for Acoetes, the helmsman.

Hymn to Dionysus

Themes

Sculpture of Pan and Nymphs. Votive relief dedicated by Neoptolemos of Melite, ca. 330 BC. Exhibited along the portico of the Stoa of Attalus, which houses the Ancient Agora Museum in Athens

Legacy and Influence

The hymns are not widely cited in surviving works from antiquity. The earliest surviving quotation is from Thucydides. Plato, however, does not mention them in any of his quotations from Homer. Most surviving Byzantine manuscripts begin with the third Hymn, which was reflected in the the first printed edition of the hymns, by Demetrius Chalcondyles, in 1488. The remaining two hymns that begin the collection were not recovered until 1777, when a chance discovery in Moscow by C.F. Matthei recovered the the final 12 lines of the first hymn, along with the nearly complete second hymn, in a single fifteenth-century manuscript that is now kept in Leiden.

Bibliography

Critical Greek Editions

• Chalkokondyles, Demetrios, ed. (1488). Ἡ τοῦ Ὁμήρου ποίησις ἅπασα (in Ancient Greek) (princeps ed.). Florence.
• Ruhnken 1782 - First Edition with all 33 hymns.
• Baumeister 1860
• E. Abel 1886
• A. Gemoll 1886
• Allen, Thomas W; E. E. Sikes, eds. (1904). Commentary on the Homeric Hymns (in Ancient Greek and English). London: Macmillan. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Allen, T. W.; Sikes, E.E.; Halliday, W.R., eds. (1936). The Homeric Hymns (in Ancient Greek and English) (Second ed.). Oxford.
• Càssola, Fillipio, ed. (1975). Inni omerici (in Ancient Greek and Italian). A. Mondadori. Retrieved 16 December 2021.

Translations

• Lang, Andrew (1899). The Homeric Hymns: A New Prose Translation and Essays, Literary and Mythological. London: G. Allen. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Evelyn-White, Hugh G. (1920). "Homeric Hymns". Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica with an English translation (in English and Ancient Greek). W. Heinemann. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Crudden, Michael (2002). The Homeric Hymns. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280240-8. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• West, Martin Litchfield (2003). Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-99606-9. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Rayor, Diane J. (12 February 2004). The Homeric Hymns: A Translation, with Introduction and Notes. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-23993-7. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
• Athanassakis, Apostolos N. (2 August 2004). Cook, Erwin (ed.). The Homeric Hymns. JHU Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-7983-8.
• Ruden, Sarah (2005). Homeric Hymns. Hackett Publishing. ISBN 978-0-87220-725-7. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Hine, Daryl (15 September 2008). Works of Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-32967-3. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Nagy, Gregory. "Homeric Hymn to Demeter". The Center for Hellenic Studies. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Richardson, Nicholas (22 April 2010). Three Homeric Hymns: To Apollo, Hermes, and Aphrodite, Hymns 3, 4, and 5. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-45158-1. Retrieved 16 December 2021.

References

• Burkert, Walter (1979). "Kynaithos, Polycrates and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo". In Knox, Bernard (ed.). Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M. W. Knox on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 53–62. ISBN 978-3-11-007798-8. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Chappell, Mike (30 June 2011). "The Homeric Hymn to Apollo: The Question of Unity". In Faulkner, Andrew (ed.). The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays. OUP Oxford. pp. 1–25. ISBN 978-0-19-958903-6. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
• Clay, Jenny Strauss (26 May 2006). The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-85399-692-4. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Faulkner, Andrew (30 June 2011). "Modern Scholarship on the Homeric Hymns: Foundational Issues". In Faulkner, Andrew (ed.). The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays. OUP Oxford. pp. 1–25. ISBN 978-0-19-958903-6. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
• Janko, Richard (1981). "The Structure of the Homeric Hymns: A Study in Genre". Hermes. 109 (1): 9–24. ISSN 0018-0777. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Janko, Richard (26 March 2007). Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns: Diachronic Development in Epic Diction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-03565-1.
• Jong, I. J. F. de (20 March 2012). "The Homeric Hymns". In Jong, Irene J. F. (ed.). Space in Ancient Greek Literature: Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative, Volume Three. BRILL. pp. 39–53. ISBN 978-90-04-22257-1. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Parker, Robert (April 1991). "The Hymn to Demeter and the Homeric Hymns". Greece & Rome. 38 (1): 1–17. doi:10.1017/S0017383500022932. ISSN 1477-4550. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Richardson, Nicholas (30 June 2011). "The Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Some Central Questions Revisited". In Faulkner, Andrew (ed.). The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays. OUP Oxford. pp. 44–58. ISBN 978-0-19-958903-6. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
• Thomas, Oliver (30 June 2011). "The Homeric Hymn to Pan". In Faulkner, Andrew (ed.). The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays. OUP Oxford. pp. 151–172. ISBN 978-0-19-958903-6. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
• West, M.L. (30 June 2011). "The Homeric Hymn to Pan". In Faulkner, Andrew (ed.). The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays. OUP Oxford. pp. 151–172. ISBN 978-0-19-958903-6. Retrieved 15 December 2021.

Further Reading

• Clay, Jenny Strauss (1 February 1997). "The Homeric Hymns". In Morris, Ian; Powell, Barry B. (eds.). A New Companion to Homer. Brill. pp. 489–507. doi:10.1163/9789004217607_023. ISBN 978-90-04-21760-7. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Currie, Bruno (28 February 2011). "Hymns, Homeric". In Finkelberg, Margalit (ed.). The Homer Encyclopedia, 3 Volume Set. Chichester, West Sussex [England]: Wiley. pp. 383–385. ISBN 978-1-4051-7768-9. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
• Depew, Mary (30 June 2009). "Enacted and Represented Dedications: Genre and Greek Hymn.". In Obbink, Dirk (ed.). Matrices of Genre: Authors, Canons, and Society. Harvard University Press. pp. 59–79. ISBN 978-0-674-03420-4. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Garcíía, John F. (1 April 2002). "Symbolic Action in the Homeric Hymns: The Theme of Recognition". Classical Antiquity. 21 (1): 5–39. doi:10.1525/ca.2002.21.1.5. ISSN 0278-6656. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Hoekstra, Arie (1969). The Sub-epic Stage of the Formulaic Tradition: Studies in the Homeric Hymns to Apollo, to Aphrodite and to Demeter. North-Holland Publishing Company. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Nagy, Gregory (2009). "Perfecting the Hymn in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo". In Athanassaki, Lucia (ed.). Athens: Hellenic Ministry of Culture: European Cultural Centre of Delphi. pp. 17–44.
• Penglase, Charles (4 October 2003). Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and Influence in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-72930-2. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
• Sowa, Cora Angier (1984). Traditional Themes and the Homeric Hymns. Bolchazy-Carducci. ISBN 978-0-86516-018-7. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
• Webster, T. B. L. (1975). "Homeric Hymns and Society". In Jean Bingen (ed.). Le Monde Grec. Pensée, Littérature, Histoire, Documents. Hommages à Claire Préaux. Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles. pp. 86–93.

External links

• Homeric Hymns public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Homeric Hymns at Perseus Digital Library