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— CH. 1 · ORIGINS AND COMPOSITION —

Homeric Hymns

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  • The Homeric Hymns are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns and one epigram. Most date to the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, though the latest, the Hymn to Ares, may have been composed as late as the fifth century CE. These poems share compositional similarities with the Iliad and the Odyssey. They use the same artificial literary dialect of Greek derived largely from Aeolic and Ionic dialects. The texts are composed in dactylic hexameter, a rhythmic form also found in Homer's epics. Short, repeated phrases known as formulae appear throughout the work. It remains unclear how far writing was involved in their creation versus oral composition. Scholars debate whether these were originally performed by singers accompanying themselves on a lyre or other stringed instrument. Performances likely took place at sympotic banquets, religious festivals, and royal courts. The earliest of the hymns were composed when oral poetry was common in Greek culture. Modern scholarship tends to avoid a sharp distinction between oral and written composition. They see the poems as traditional texts originating in a strongly oral culture.

  • Irene de Jong has contrasted the narrative focus of the Homeric Hymns with that of the Homeric epics. The gods are the primary focus of the hymns, with mortals serving primarily to witness the gods' actions. The poems make use of iterative narration within passages of singulative narration. This style is relatively rare in ancient Greek literature. The Hymn to Demeter covers the abduction of Persephone and Demeter's attempt to recover her from the Underworld. It details the origin of the cult of Demeter at Eleusis. The Hymn to Hermes describes the first three days of his life including the theft of Apollo's cattle. He also crafts a tortoiseshell lyre during this time. The Hymn to Aphrodite tells the love story between the goddess and the mortal hero Anchises. Several hymns discuss the origins of a god's cult or the founding of a major sanctuary dedicated to them. Claude Calame has referred to these works as contracts by which praise invites reciprocity from the deity. These texts functioned as invocations often connected with specific cults or sanctuaries associated with each deity.

  • The Homeric Hymns are quoted comparatively rarely in ancient literature. There are sporadic references to them in early Greek lyric poetry such as the works of Pindar and Sappho. The lyric poet Alcaeus composed hymns around 600 BCE to Dionysus and to the Dioscuri. These were influenced by the equivalent Homeric hymns. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes inspired the Ichneutae, a satyr play composed in the fifth century BCE by Sophocles. Few definite references to the hymns can be dated to the fourth century BCE. The hymns do not appear to have been studied by the Hellenistic scholiasts of Alexandria. They were used and adapted by Alexandrian poets particularly of the third century BCE. Eratosthenes adapted the Homeric Hymn to Hermes for his own account of the god's birth. Callimachus drew on the Homeric Hymns for his own hymns and is the earliest poet known to have used them as inspiration for multiple works. The mythographer Apollodorus wrote in the second century BCE may have had access to a collection of the hymns. He considered them Homeric in origin.

  • The Greek philosopher Philodemus moved to Italy between around 80 and 70 BCE. His own works quoted from the hymns to Demeter and Apollo. In Roman poetry the opening of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura written around the mid 50s BCE has correspondences with the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Catullus emulated the Homeric Hymns in his epyllion on the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Virgil drew upon the Homeric Hymns in his Aeneid composed between 29 and 19 BCE. The encounter in Book 1 of the Aeneid between Aeneas and his mother Venus references the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Later in the Aeneid the account of the theft of Hercules's cattle by Cacus is based upon that of the theft of Apollo's cattle by Hermes. Ovid made extensive use of the Homeric Hymns. His account of Apollo and Daphne in the Metamorphoses published in 8 CE references the Hymn to Apollo. Other parts of the Metamorphoses make reference to the Hymn to Demeter and the second Hymn to Dionysus.

  • The Homeric Hymns were copied and adapted widely in fifteenth-century Italy. Marsilio Ficino made a translation of them around 1462. Giovanni Tortelli used them for examples in his 1478 grammatical treatise. The Stanze written in the 1470s by Angelo Poliziano paraphrase the second Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. These stanzas were in turn an inspiration for Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus painted in the 1480s. The first printed edition of the works of Homer including the Homeric Hymns was made by Demetrios Chalkokondyles in 1488, 1489. The rediscovery of the Hymn to Demeter in 1777 sparked a series of scholarly editions of the poem in Germany. It also influenced Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's melodrama Proserpina first published as a prose work in 1778. George Chapman made the first English translation of them in 1624. William Congreve published a version of the first Hymn to Aphrodite in 1710.

  • The hymns were frequently read praised and adapted by the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century. In 1814 Leigh Hunt published a translation of the second Hymn to Dionysus. Thomas Love Peacock adapted part of the same hymn in the fifth canto of his Rhododaphne published posthumously in 1818. Percy Bysshe Shelley made a translation of some of the shorter Homeric Hymns into heroic couplets in January 1818. Of Shelley's own poems The Witch of Atlas written in 1820 was most closely influenced by the Homeric Hymns. James Joyce made use of the Hymn to Demeter in his 1922 novel Ulysses. The character Stephen Dedalus references an old hymn to Demeter while undergoing a journey reminiscent of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Joyce also drew upon the Hymn to Hermes in the characterization of both Dedalus and his companion Buck Mulligan. Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film Rear Window cites the first Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite as an influence particularly for the character Lisa Freemont played by Grace Kelly. Neil Gaiman's 2002 children's novel Coraline contains allusions to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

  • Only a few ancient papyrus copies of the Homeric Hymns are known. An Attic vase painted around 470 BCE shows a youth holding a scroll with the first two words of the second Homeric Hymn to Hermes. At least the longer hymns seem to have been collected into a single edition during the Hellenistic period. The grouping of the hymns into their current corpus may date to late antiquity. References to the shorter poems as being within the corpus begin to be found in sources dating from the second and third centuries CE. The surviving medieval manuscripts of the poems date to the fifteenth century. They descend from a single now-lost manuscript known in scholarship by the siglum Omega. A manuscript known by the siglum V was commissioned by Cardinal Bessarion probably in the 1460s. This arrangement became standard in subsequent editions of Homer's works. One manuscript known as M was written by Ioannes Eugenikos in the first half of the fifteenth century. It preserved both the first Hymn to Dionysus and the Hymn to Demeter but both were lost until 1777 when Christian Frederick Matthaei discovered it in a barn outside Moscow.

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Orphic Hymns

Common questions

What are the Homeric Hymns and when were they composed?

The Homeric Hymns are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns and one epigram. Most date to the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, though the latest, the Hymn to Ares, may have been composed as late as the fifth century CE.

How do the Homeric Hymns differ from the Iliad and the Odyssey in narrative focus?

Irene de Jong has contrasted the narrative focus of the Homeric Hymns with that of the Homeric epics by noting that gods are the primary focus of the hymns while mortals serve primarily to witness the gods' actions. The poems make use of iterative narration within passages of singulative narration which is relatively rare in ancient Greek literature.

Which specific myths does the Homeric Hymn to Demeter cover regarding Persephone?

The Hymn to Demeter covers the abduction of Persephone and Demeter's attempt to recover her from the Underworld. It details the origin of the cult of Demeter at Eleusis.

Who translated the Homeric Hymns into English during the early nineteenth century?

Percy Bysshe Shelley made a translation of some of the shorter Homeric Hymns into heroic couplets in January 1818. Leigh Hunt published a translation of the second Hymn to Dionysus in 1814 and Thomas Love Peacock adapted part of the same hymn in his Rhododaphne published posthumously in 1818.

When was the Hymn to Demeter rediscovered after being lost for centuries?

Both the first Hymn to Dionysus and the Hymn to Demeter were lost until 1777 when Christian Frederick Matthaei discovered them in a barn outside Moscow. The rediscovery of the Hymn to Demeter in 1777 sparked a series of scholarly editions of the poem in Germany.

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All sources

127 references cited across the entry

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