TheHomeric Hymns (Ancient Greek:Ὁμηρικοὶ ὕμνοι,romanised: Homērikoì húmnoi) are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greekhymns and oneepigram.[a] The hymns praise deities of theGreek pantheon and retell mythological stories, often involving a deity's birth, their acceptance among the gods onMount Olympus, or the establishment of theircult. In antiquity, the hymns were generally, though not universally, attributed to the poetHomer: modern scholarship has established that most date to the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, though some are more recent and the latest, theHymn to Ares, may have been composed as late as the fifth century CE.
TheHomeric Hymns share compositional similarities with theIliad and theOdyssey, also traditionally attributed to Homer. They share the sameartificial literary dialect of Greek, are composed indactylic hexameter, and make use of short, repeated phrases known asformulae. It is unclear how far writing, as opposed tooral composition, was involved in their creation. They may initially have served as preludes to the recitation of longer poems, and have been performed, at least originally, by singers accompanying themselves on alyre or another stringed instrument. Performances of the hymns may have taken place atsympotic banquets, religious festivals and royal courts.
A Roman bust ofHomer, considered in antiquity to be the poet of theHomeric Hymns, after a Hellenistic version of the second century BCE[2]
TheHomeric Hymns mostly date to thearchaic period (c. 800 – c. 480 BCE) of Greek history,[3] though they often retell much older stories.[4] The earliest of the hymns date to the seventh century BCE;[5] most were probably composed between that century and the sixth century BCE,[3] though theHymn to Ares was composed considerably later and may date from as late as the fifth century CE.[6] Although the individual hymns can rarely be dated with certainty, the longer poems (Hymns 2–5) are generally considered archaic in date.[7]
The earliest of theHomeric Hymns were composed in a time period whenoral poetry was common in Greek culture.[8] It is unclear how far the hymns were composed orally, as opposed to with the use of writing, and scholars debate the degree of consistency or "fixity" likely to have existed between early versions of the hymns in performance.[9][c] The debate is clouded by the impossibility of determining for certain whether a poem with characteristic features of oral poetry was in fact composed orally, or composed using writing but in imitation of an oral-poetic style.[14] Modern scholarship tends to avoid a sharp distinction between oral and written composition, seeing the poems as traditional texts originating in a strongly oral culture.[15]
The name "Homeric Hymns" derives from the attribution, in antiquity, of the hymns toHomer, then believed to be the poet of theIliad andOdyssey.[16] TheHymn to Apollo was attributed to Homer byPindar andThucydides, who wrote around the beginning and the end of the fifth century BCE respectively.[17] This attribution may have reflected the high esteem in which the hymns were held, as well as their stylistic similarities with the Homeric poems.[16] The dialect of the hymns,an artificial literary language (Kunstsprache) derived largely from theAeolic andIonic dialects of Greek, is similar to that used in theIliad andOdyssey.[18] Like theIliad andOdyssey, the hymns are composed in the rhythmic form known asdactylic hexameter and make use offormulae: short, set phrases with particular metrical characteristics that could be repeated as a compositional aid.[19]
The attribution to Homer was sometimes questioned in antiquity, such as by the rhetoricianAthenaeus, who expressed his doubts about it around 200 CE.[20] Other hypotheses in ancient times included the belief that theHymn to Apollo was the work ofKynaithos of Chios, one of theHomeridae, a circle of poets claiming descent from Homer.[7] Someancient biographies of Homer denied his authorship of theHomeric Hymns, and the hymns' comparative absence, relative to theIliad andOdyssey, from the work of scholars based inHellenistic (323–30 BCE)Alexandria may suggest that they were no longer considered to be his work by this period.[21] However, few direct statements denying Homer's authorship of the hymns survive from antiquity: in the second century CE, the Greek geographerPausanias maintained their attribution to Homer.[22]
Irene de Jong has contrasted the narrative focus of theHomeric Hymns with that of the Homeric epics, writing that the gods are the primary focus of the hymns, with mortals serving primarily to witness the gods' actions, whereas the epics focus primarily on their mortal characters and use the gods to support the portrayal of human affairs.[23] The poems also make use of different narrative styles: theHomeric Hymns are unlike the Homeric epics in that they employ iterative narration (accounts of events which repeatedly or habitually occur), which is relatively rare in ancient Greek literature, within passages of singulative narration (accounts of specific events related in sequence).René Nünlist [de] has also suggested that theHomeric Hymns generally place greater focus on single events than the Homeric epics, and cover a shorter span of time, resulting in what he calls a comparatively "slow" narration.[24]
OfPallas Athena, guardian of the city, I begin to sing. Dread is she, and withAres she loves deeds of war, the sack of cities and the shouting and the battle. It is she who saves the people as they go out to war and come back.
Hail, goddess, and give us good fortune with happiness!
The hymns vary considerably in length, between 3 and 580 surviving lines.[26] They are generally considered to have originally functioned as preludes (prooimia) to recitations of longer works, such asepic poems.[27] Many of the hymns end with a verse indicating that another song will follow, sometimes specifically a work of heroic epic.[26] Over time, however, at least some may have lengthened and been recited independently of other works.[28] The hymns which currently survive as shorter works may equally be abridgements of longer works, retaining the introduction and conclusion of a poem whose central narrative has been lost.[29]
The first known sources referring to the poems as "hymns" (hymnoi) date from the first century BCE.[30] In concept, an ancient hymn was an invocation of a deity, often connected with a specific cult or sanctuary associated with that deity.[28] The hymns often cover the deity's birth, arrival onOlympus, and dealings with human beings. Several discuss the origins of the god's cult or the founding of a major sanctuary dedicated to them.[31] Some areaetiological accounts of religious cults, specific rituals, aspects of a deity's iconography and responsibilities, or of aspects of human technology and culture.[32] The hymns have been considered asagalmata, or gifts offered to deities on behalf of a community or social group.[33] In this capacity,Claude Calame has referred to them as "contracts", by which the praise of the deity in the hymn invites reciprocity from that deity in the form of favour or protection for the singer or their community.[34]
Little is known about the musical settings of theHomeric Hymns.[35] The earliest surviving ancient Greek musical compositions date to the end of the fifth century BCE, after the composition of nearly all of the hymns.[36] Originally, the hymns appear to have been performed by singers accompanying themselves on a stringed instrument, such as alyre; later, they may have been recited, rather than sung, by an orator holding a staff.[20] TheHymn to Apollo makes reference to a chorus of maidens on the island ofDelos, the Deliades, who sang hymns to Apollo,Leto andArtemis.[37] References to instruments of the lyre family (known interchangeably asphorminx) occur throughout theHomeric Hymns and other archaic texts, such as theIliad andOdyssey.[38] These lyres generally had four strings in the early period of the hymns' composition, though seven-stringed versions became more common during the seventh century BCE.[39] Apaean, probably written in 138 BCE, mentions the accompaniment of hymnic singing with akithara (a seven-stringed instrument of the lyre family), and contrasts this style of music with that of theaulos, areeded wind instrument.[40] It is unlikely that early Greek music was written down; instead, compositions were transmitted aurally and passed on through tradition.[41] Until the fourth century BCE, few compositions appear to have been intended for repeat performance or long-term transmission.[42]
TheHomeric Hymns may have been composed to be recited at religious festivals, perhaps at singing contests: several directly or indirectly ask the god's support in competition.[43] Some allude to the deity's cult at a specific place and may have been composed for performance within that cult, though the latter did not necessarily follow from the former.[44] They seem likely to have been performed frequently in various contexts throughout antiquity, such as at banquets orsymposia.[45] It has been suggested that the fifth hymn, toAphrodite, could have been composed for performance at a royal or aristocratic court,[46] perhaps of a family in theTroad claiming descent from Aphrodite via her sonAeneas.[47] The hymns' narrative voice has been described by Marco Fantuzzi andRichard Hunter as "communal", usually making only generalised reference to their place of composition or the identity of the speaker. This made the hymns suitable for recitation by different speakers and for different audiences.[48]Jenny Strauss Clay has suggested that theHomeric Hymns played a role in the establishment of apanhellenic conception of the Olympian pantheon, with Zeus as its head, and therefore in promoting the cultural unity of Greeks from differentpolities.[49]
A fragmentary painting, showing Hermes, fromStabiae, first century CE[50]
TheHomeric Hymns are quoted comparatively rarely in ancient literature.[51] There are sporadic references to them in early Greeklyric poetry, such as the works of Pindar andSappho.[52] The lyric poetAlcaeus composed hymns around 600 BCE toDionysus and to theDioscuri, which were influenced by the equivalent Homeric hymns, as possibly was Alcaeus's hymn toHermes. TheHomeric Hymn to Hermes also inspired theIchneutae, asatyr play composed in the fifth century BCE by the Athenian playwrightSophocles.[53] Few definite references to the hymns can be dated to the fourth century BCE, though theThebaid ofAntimachus may contain allusions to the hymns to Aphrodite, Dionysus and Hermes.[54] A few fifth-century painted vases show myths depicted in theHomeric Hymns and may have been inspired by the poems, but it is difficult to be certain whether the correspondences reflect direct contact with the hymns or simply the commonplace nature of their underlying mythic narratives.[55]
The hymns do not appear to have been studied by the Hellenisticscholiasts of Alexandria,[28] though they were used and adapted by Alexandrian poets, particularly of the third century BCE.Eratosthenes, the chief librarian at Alexandria, adapted theHomeric Hymn to Hermes for his ownHermes, an account of the god's birth and invention of the lyre.[56]Phainomena, adidactic poem about the heavens byAratus, drew on the same poem.[57]Callimachus drew on theHomeric Hymns for his own hymns, and is the earliest poet known to have used them as inspiration for multiple works.[58] The hymns were also used byTheocritus, Callimachus's approximate contemporary, in hisIdylls17,22 and24,[59][d] and by the similarly contemporaryApollonius of Rhodes in hisArgonautica.[61] The mythographerApollodorus, who wrote in the second century BCE, may have had access to a collection of the hymns and considered them Homeric in origin.[62] The first century BCE historianDionysius of Halicarnassus also quoted from the hymns and referred to them as "Homeric".[63]Diodorus Siculus, another historian writing in the first century BCE, quoted verses of the firstHymn to Dionysus.[64]
The Greek philosopherPhilodemus, who moved to Italy between around 80 and 70 BCE and died around 40 to 35 BCE, has been suggested as a possible originator for the movement of manuscripts of theHomeric Hymns into the Roman world, and consequently for their reception into Latin literature.[65] His own works quoted from the hymns to Demeter andApollo.[64] In Roman poetry, the opening ofLucretius'sDe rerum natura, written around the mid 50s BCE, has correspondences with theHomeric Hymn to Aphrodite,[66] whileCatullus emulated theHomeric Hymns inhis epyllion on the wedding ofPeleus andThetis.[67]Virgil drew upon theHomeric Hymns in hisAeneid, composed between 29 and 19 BCE. The encounter in Book 1 of theAeneid between Aeneas and his motherVenus references theHomeric Hymn to Aphrodite, in which Venus's Greek counterpart seduces Aeneas's father,Anchises.[68] Later in theAeneid, the account of the theft ofHercules's cattle by the monsterCacus is based upon that of the theft of Apollo's cattle by Hermes in theHomeric Hymn to Hermes.[69]
The Roman poetOvid made extensive use of theHomeric Hymns: his account ofApollo and Daphne in theMetamorphoses, published in 8 CE, references theHymn to Apollo,[70] while other parts of theMetamorphoses make reference to theHymn to Demeter, theHymn to Aphrodite and the secondHymn to Dionysus.[71] Ovid's account of theabduction of Persephone in hisFasti, written and revised between 2 and around 14 CE, likewise references theHymn to Demeter.[72] Ovid further makes use of theHymn to Aphrodite inHeroides 16, in whichParis adapts a section of the hymn to convinceHelen of his worthiness for her.[73] TheOdes of Ovid's contemporaryHorace also make use of theHomeric Hymns, particularly the five longer poems.[74] In the second century CE, the Greek-speaking authorsLucian andAelius Aristides drew on the hymns: Aristides used them in his orations, while Lucian parodied them in his satiricalDialogues of the Gods.[75]
Inlate antiquity (that is, from around the third to the sixth centuries CE),[77] the direct influence of theHomeric Hymns was comparatively limited until the fifth century.[78] TheHymn to Hermes was a partial exception, as it was frequently taught in schools. It is possibly alluded to in an anonymous third-century poem praising agymnasiarch named Theon, preserved bya papyrus fragment found atOxyrhynchus in Egypt and probably written by a student for a local festival.[79] It also influenced the "Strasbourg Cosmogony", a poem composed around 350 CE (possibly by the poet and local politicianAndronicus) in commemoration of the mythical origins of the Egyptian city ofHermopolis Magna.[80] TheHomeric Hymns did influence the fourth-century Christian poemThe Vision of Dorotheus and a third-century hymn toJesus transmitted among theSibylline Oracles.[81] They may also have been a model, alongside the hymns of Callimachus, for the fourth-century Christian hymns known as thePoemata Arcana, written byGregory of Nazianzus.[82] In the fifth century, the Greek-speaking poetNonnus quoted and adapted the hymns;[78] from that time onwards, other poets, such asMusaeus Grammaticus andColuthus, made use of them.[83]
Although theHomeric Hymns were known and transmitted in the Byzantine period, they were only rarely referenced, and never quoted, in Byzantine literature.[84] The sixth-century poetPaul Silentiarius celebrated the restoration ofHagia Sophia by the emperorJustinian I in a poem which borrowed from theHomeric Hymn to Hermes.[85] Later authors, such as the eleventh-centuryMichael Psellos, may have drawn upon them, but it is often unclear whether their allusions are drawn directly from theHomeric Hymns or from other works narrating the same myths.[86] The hymns have also been cited as an inspiration for the twelfth-century poetry ofTheodore Prodromos.[87]TheHomeric Hymns were copied and adapted widely in fifteenth-century Italy, for example by the poetsMichael Marullus andFrancesco Filelfo.[88]Marsilio Ficino made a translation of them around 1462;Giovanni Tortelli used them for examples in his 1478 grammatical treatiseDe Orthographia.[88] TheStanze per la giostra [it] ('Stanzas for the Joust'), written in the 1470s byAngelo Poliziano, paraphrase the secondHomeric Hymn to Aphrodite, and were in turn an inspiration forSandro Botticelli'sThe Birth of Venus, painted in the 1480s.[89]
A scene from a 2019 performance ofHandel's musical dramaSemele, whoselibretto includes translations from theHomeric Hymn to Aphrodite[90]
Georgius Dartona made the first translation of theHomeric Hymns into Latin,[91] which was published in Paris byChrétien Wechel [fr] in 1538.[92][e] Around 1570, the French humanistJean Daurat gave lectures in which he advanced an allegorical reading of the opening of the firstHymn to Aphrodite.[93] The first English translation of the hymns was made byGeorge Chapman in 1624, as part of his complete translation of Homer's works.[93] Although they received relatively little attention in English poetry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the playwright and poetWilliam Congreve published a version of the firstHymn to Aphrodite, written inheroic couplets, in 1710.[94] Congreve also wrote an operaticlibretto,Semele, set to music byJohn Eccles in 1707 but not performed until the twentieth century.[95] Congreve published the libretto in 1710; in 1744,George Frideric Handel releaseda version of the opera with his own music and alterations to the libretto made by an unknown collaborator,[96] including a newly-added passage quoting Congreve's translation of theHymn to Aphrodite.[90] The rediscovery of theHymn to Demeter in 1777 sparked a series of scholarly editions of the poem in Germany, and its first translations into German (in 1780) and Latin (in 1782).[97] It was also an influence onJohann Wolfgang von Goethe's melodramaProserpina, first published as a prose work in 1778.[98]
The hymns were frequently read, praised and adapted by the EnglishRomantic poets of the early nineteenth century. In 1814, the essayist and poetLeigh Hunt published a translation of the secondHymn to Dionysus.[99]Thomas Love Peacock adapted part of the same hymn in the fifthcanto of hisRhododaphne, published posthumously in 1818.[100] In January 1818,Percy Bysshe Shelley made a translation of some of the shorterHomeric Hymns into heroic couplets; in July 1820, he translated theHymn to Hermes intoottava rima.[93] Of Shelley's own poems,The Witch of Atlas, written in 1820, andWith a Guitar, to Jane, written in 1822, were most closely influenced by theHomeric Hymns, particularly theHymn to Hermes.[101] The 1889 poem "Demeter and Persephone" byAlfred, Lord Tennyson, reinterprets the narrative of theHymn to Demeter as an allegory for the coming ofChrist.[102]
TheHymn to Demeter was particularly influential as one of the few sources, and the earliest source, for the religious rituals known as theEleusinian Mysteries.[103] It became an important nexus of the debate as to the nature of early Greek religion in early-nineteenth-century German scholarship.[104] The anthropologistJames George Frazer discussed the hymn at length inThe Golden Bough, his influential 1890 work of comparative mythology and religion.[105]James Joyce made use of the same hymn, and possibly Frazer's work, in his 1922 novelUlysses, in which the characterStephen Dedalus references "an old hymn to Demeter" while undergoing a journey reminiscent of the Eleusinian Mysteries.[106] Joyce also drew upon theHymn to Hermes in the characterisation of both Dedalus and his companionBuck Mulligan.[107]TheCantos by Joyce's friend and mentorEzra Pound, written between 1915 and 1960, also draw on theHomeric Hymns: Canto I concludes with parts of the hymns to Aphrodite, in both Latin and English.[108] In modern Greek poetry, the 1901 "Interruption" byConstantine P. Cavafy references the myth ofDemophon as told in theHomeric Hymn to Demeter.[109]
The firstHomeric Hymn to Aphrodite has also been cited as an influence onAlfred Hitchcock's 1954 filmRear Window, particularly for the character of Lisa Freemont, played byGrace Kelly.[110] Judith Fletcher has traced allusions to theHomeric Hymn to Demeter inNeil Gaiman's 2002 children's novelCoraline andits 2009 film adaptation, arguing that the allusions in the novel's text are "subliminal" but become explicit in the film.[111]
A terracottapinax showing theAbduction of Persephone, from the sanctuary of Persephone atEpizephyrian Locris (Locri) inCalabria, Italy, used between the sixth and the fourth centuries BCE.[112] Persephone's abduction forms the focus of theHymn to Demeter, which may have been known at Locri.[113]
Only a few ancientpapyrus copies of theHomeric Hymns are known.[114] AnAttic vase painted around 470 BCE shows a youth, seated, holding a scroll with the first two words of the secondHomeric Hymn to Hermes: this has been used to suggest that the hymns were used as educational texts by this period.[115] At least the longer hymns seem to have been collected into a single edition at some point during the Hellenistic period (323–30 BCE).[30] Alexander Hall has argued that Hymns 1–26, except 6 (theHymn to Aphrodite) and 8 (theHymn to Ares), were initially collected into what he calls a "proto-collection", probably no earlier than the Hellenistic period, with the remaining hymns later added as anappendix.[116]
Unlike those of theIliad andOdyssey, the text of theHomeric Hymns was comparatively little edited by the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria.[117]Franco Ferrari [it] has suggested that, throughout antiquity, manuscripts of the text may have circulated which intentionally included two different versions ("doublets") of the same word: Alexandrian scholars developed the practice of marking these with a dottedantisigma (ↄ), evidence of which can be found in surviving manuscripts of theHymn to Apollo.[118]
The grouping of the hymns into their currentcorpus may date to late antiquity.[28] References to the shorter poems as being within the corpus begin to be found in sources dating from the second and third centuries CE.[30] The assemblage of the thirty-three hymns listed today as "Homeric" dates to no earlier than the third century CE.[119] Between the fifth and the thirteenth centuries CE, theHomeric Hymns were generally transcribed in an edition which also contained theHymns of Callimachus, theOrphic Hymns, the hymns ofProclus and theOrphic Argonautica.[120]
Manuscripts of theHomeric Hymns, often bundling them with other works such as the hymns of Callimachus, continued to be made during the Byzantine period.[121] The surviving medieval manuscripts of the poems date to the fifteenth century and are drawn primarily from the late-antique compilation of theHomeric Hymns along with Orphic and other hymnic poetry.[122] They all descend from a single, now-lost manuscript, known in scholarship by thesiglum Ω (omega) and possibly written inminuscule.[123] In fifteenth-century Italy, the hymns were copied widely. A manuscript known by the siglum V, commissioned by the Byzantine-born Catholic cardinalBessarion probably in the 1460s, published the hymns at the end of a collection of the other works then considered Homeric.[124] This arrangement became standard in subsequent editions of Homer's works, and played an important role in establishing the perceived relationship between the hymns, theIliad and theOdyssey.[125] The first printed edition (editio princeps) of the works of Homer, which included theHomeric Hymns, was made by the Florence-based Greek scholarDemetrios Chalkokondyles in 1488–1489.[125][b] The 1566 edition, made byHenri Estienne, was the first to include line numbers and a Latin translation.[127]
By the end of the eighteenth century, twenty-five Byzantine manuscripts were known.[128] One, known as M or theCodex Mosquensis, was written by the polymathIoannes Eugenikos in the first half of the fifteenth century, possibly inConstantinople or Italy.[131] This manuscript preserved both the firstHymn to Dionysus and theHymn to Demeter, but both were lost at some point after its creation and remained unknown until 1777, when thephilologistChristian Frederick Matthaei discovered Μ in a barn outside Moscow.[132] All surviving manuscripts, apart from Μ, have among their sources a lost one known by the siglum Ψ (psi), which probably dates to the twelfth or thirteenth century. This may be a manuscript mentioned in a letter by the humanistGiovanni Aurispa in 1424, which he stated he had acquired in Constantinople;[114] Aurispa's manuscript has also been suggested as being Ω.[133] As of 2016, a total of twenty-nine manuscripts of the hymns are known.[134]
A page from the manuscript known as M, written in the fifteenth century and rediscovered in 1777.[135] This page shows part of theHymn to Demeter.
Until the later twentieth century, theHomeric Hymns received relatively little attention from classical scholars or translators.[136] Nocollation of the hymns' manuscripts was made between that of Chalkokondyles in 1488 and 1749.[137]Joshua Barnes published an edition of the hymns in 1711, which was the first to attempt to explain textual issues by citing parallels in other texts considered to be Homeric.Friedrich August Wolf published two editions, as part of larger editions of Homer, in 1794 and 1807. The first modern edition of the hymns as a separate text, without the Homeric epics, was made in 1796 byKarl David Ilgen and followed by editions byAugust Mattiae in 1805 andGottfried Hermann in 1806.[127] In 1886,Albert Gemoll [de] published a German edition of the hymns: this was both the first modern edition in a vernacular language (that is, not in Latin) and the only edition to date that has printeddigammas in their text.[138][f] The present conventional order of the hymns was established by the Oxford edition ofAlfred Goodwin in 1893, following that employed by the manuscript M: previously, theHymn to Apollo had been placed first.[141] Reviewing Goodwin's work in 1894,Edward Ernest Sikes judged that most of the important work on theHomeric Hymns had previously been done by German scholars, and that "little of importance" had recently been written, apart from Goodwin's edition, on them in English.[142]
In the first half of the eighteenth century,Jacques Philippe d’Orville [de] wrote a book of notes on the text of theHomeric Hymns, in which he condemned Barnes's then-standard 1711 edition and the 1722 edition ofMichel Maittaire.[143] The first modern textual criticism of the hymns dates to 1749, whenDavid Ruhnken published his readings of two medieval manuscripts, known as A and C.[127] The hymns' text was a matter of considerable scholarly attention in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.August Baumeister published an edition of the hymns in 1860, which was the first to integrate readings based on the Θ (theta) family of manuscripts (a sub-family of those descended from Ψ).[144]Robert Yelverton Tyrrell wrote in 1894 that the text of theHomeric Hymns had been in a "state of chaos" before Baumeister's edition,[145] though their text was still considered problematic at the turn of the 20th century: Thomas Leyden Agar wrote in 1916 of the "manifold and manifest" errors of tradition in the hymns.[146] In 1984,Bruno Gentili suggested that variations found in the manuscript tradition as to the reading of particular passages may have been considered equally-correct alternations (adiaphoroi) available to a rhapsode, and therefore that attempts to discriminate between them in modern editions were misguided.[147]
Between 1894 and 1897,Thomas William Allen published a series of four articles inThe Journal of Hellenic Studies on textual problems in theHomeric Hymns, which became the basis of the 1904 edition of the hymns he co-produced with Edward Ernest Sikes.[148] In 1912, Allen published an edition of the hymns in theOxford Classical Texts series.[149] He published an updated version of his 1904 edition in 1936, co-edited withWilliam Reginald Halliday; Sikes refused to collaborate on it, but remained credited as an editor.[150] The first commentary on a single hymn was that of Nicholas Richardson on theHymn to Demeter in 1974.[151] In hisLoeb Classical Library edition of 2003,Martin West rejected theadiaphoroi argument of Gentili, choosing instead to posit a correct reading for each known alternation.[152]
The foundation of Apollo's sanctuaries atDelphi andDelos:Leto's search for a place for Apollo to be born, and Apollo's search for a place for hisoracle
^abTheHymn to Hosts is strictly anepigram, rather than ahymn, as it does not address a deity. It is transmitted in some manuscripts of theHomeric Hymns.[205]
^abPrinting of the first edition commenced in 1488, but was not completed until January 1489.[126]
^In 1962, James Notopoulos established that the longer hymns share characteristic features of oral poetry, such as the use of repeated formulae and certainprosodic tendencies, with the Homeric epics. Notopoulos argued that this demonstrated that they were composed orally,[10] a view echoed by Norman Postlethwaite for the shorter hymns in 1979.[11] Other scholars, such asGeoffrey Kirk, rejected the legitimacy of Notopoulos's approach and argued for written composition.[12]Richard Janko suggests that the earlier poems may initially have been composed orally, but dictated by rhapsodes for writing at a relatively early stage in their history.[13]
^Idyll 25, once attributed to Theocritus but now generally considered spurious, also alludes to theHomeric Hymn to Hermes.[60]
^The twentieth-centurymodernist poetEzra Pound owned a copy of Dartona's translation, which was bound alongside one of theOdyssey made byAndreas Divus: Pound disparaged Dartona's work as "thin clear Tuscan stuff", as opposed to the "mellow phrase" of Divus.[92]
^The letter digamma (ϝ), representing the sound /w/, ceased to be used in most Greek dialects during the Archaic period. It does not appear in manuscripts of the Homeric epics or theHomeric Hymns, but theprosody of the poems sometimes leaves traces of where it previously occurred in spoken Greek.[139]
^Sometimes divided into two: the "Hymn to Delian Apollo" (ending either at line 178 or 181) and the "Hymn to Pythian Apollo".[158]
^Claimed byMartin West as the work of the fifth-century CE philosopherProclus: this attribution is now considered unsound on philosophical and philological grounds.[170]
^Richardson 2010, p. 33. For the suggestion of Ω as a minuscule manuscript, seeAllen 1895a, pp. 142–143 andOlson 2012, p. 43. For the textual and manuscript history of the hymns, seeWest 2003, p. 22
^Richardson 2010, p. 33;Gelzer 1994, p. 124. Gelzer suggests that Μ was copied in Italy and should be dated after 1439;[129] Simelidis argues for a date earlier in the 1430s and for production in Constantinople.[130]
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Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica atWikisource
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Homeric Hymns public domain audiobook atLibriVox
