Composed roughly at the same time as the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Homeric Hymns are poems, generally attributed in antiquity to Homer, giving individual praise to a number of Greek gods in hexameter form. The composition date given by encyclopedias varies: according to the Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (accessible for OU students through the OU library in electronic form) it is 8th to 6th centuries BC, while the Columbian Electronic Encyclopedia (accessible via the same route) has "between 800 and 300 BC". Light is shed on this controversy by Wikipedia, of all things, explaining that "although most of [the poems] 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". (I personally have found the Wikipedia entry the most informative, containing many bits of useful information, which the various Oxford Companions and Dictionaries did not choose to include.) I had an idea about what a hymn to a god may be like - a barrage of epithets and lavish, albeit formulaic, praise (a bit like those rather repetitive votive offerings found at sanctuary sites from the same period), but I was surprised to find extended narratives in some of the poems. After the invocation and praise, the narrative passage must have provided an opportunity for the rhapsode to shine and for the audience to be entertained. In antiquity, the hymns were sometimes called 'preludes' (prooimia), probably introductions to narratives that followed, says the Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition by Nicholas Richardson. Although in many cases the narratives seem to be already included, the explanation suggested by Richardson is that the hymn or series of hymns introduced an even 'more extensive epic song'. However, he concludes, it is impossible to be sure. The Homeric Hymns page on the website of Washington State University says: "Many of the hymns function as introductions, but it is not known to what". It seems likely enough that these poems were performed at festivals, perhaps dedicated to a specific god. Many festivals included contests in singing, where all the hopefuls could queue up and compete in front of an audience (which included, one supposes, all the worshippers gathered together for the festival). Some of the hymns contain a reference to this: the poet prays to the deity to "give honour" to his song. In other poems, interestingly, the poets say goodbye to the god or goddess at the end of the poem and announce that now they are going to sing another song (perhaps to another god?). This sounds more like somebody performing a varied repertoire with no strict time constraints. This takes us to the question of authorship: if these songs were entered into different singing contests, and we presume that the winning entries were preserved and became the 'Homeric Hymns', it is unlikely that they were composed by the same person. As far as we know, Athenaeus was the first in antiquity to express doubts about the Homeric authorship of the hymns (The Homeric Hymns by Apostolos N. Athanassakis, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976, 2004, p. xiv). The Hymns, despite being attributed to Homer, were largely ignored during antiquity (Athanassakis found only a handful of quotes in later authors), and when Alexandrian scholars decided that they were definitely not written by Homer, even the little interest they had held "diminished to the point of neglect" (Stewart, Michael. "People, Places & Things: Homeric Hymns", Greek Mythology: From the Iliad to the Fall of the Last Tyrant). Some have expressed opinions close to that of the Alexandrian scholars - if not about authorship, but about the worth and importance of the poems: "Why any man should have collected the little preludes of five or six lines in length, and of purely conventional character, while he did not copy out the longer poems to which they probably served as preludes, is a mystery" (Andrew Lang [1844-1912], The So-Called Homeric Hymns). Lang also adds: "To the English reader familiar with the Iliad and Odyssey, the Hymns must appear disappointing, if he come to them with an expectation of discovering merits like those of the immortal epics." Lang himself decided that they were, however, a rich source of "aspects of Greek religion", although, lamentably, these aspects are those "descending [...] from the mythology of savages, the mythic store of Greece [being] rich in legends such as we find among the lowest races. Homer usually ignores them: Hesiod and the authors of the Hymns are less noble in their selections". What can I say? I hope you will enjoy all the savagery of the Hymns, and here's a quote for those who don't turn up their noses. The god Dionysus, as he is standing "on the shore of the desolate sea", gets abducted by pirates, who have mistaken him for a king's son and are hoping for a huge ransom, so...
"With harsh ropes they wanted to hold him down. But the ropes would not hold. The willow bonds just dropped off him, fell far away from his hands and feet. He sat there and his dark eyes smiled." (VII - Hymn to Dionysos, in: Homeric Hymns, 2003, Penguin Classics, trans. Jules Cashford)
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AuthorHave studied A219 Exploring the Classical World and A275 Reading Classical Greek at the Open University. Currently studying for a Psychology degree. ImagesPlease click on any image to be taken to its source.
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