The Homeric Hymns are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek poems composed in the old epic style in which Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were written.
In Ancient Greece, it was customary for performances to begin with a hymn to a god or goddess, much like Hesiod’s Theogony. The Homeric Hymns were composed in dactylic hexameter and range in length from three to five hundred lines. The language is the artificial literary Greek dialect used by Homer.
Some of the Homeric Hymns are simple invocations of only a few lines, likely serving as preludes to longer festival recitations or aristocratic symposia. The four longest, namely to Demeter (495 lines), Apollo (546 lines), Hermes (580 lines), and Aphrodite (293 lines), are complete epic narrative poems. It is also believed they were sung at Eleusinian Mysteries festivals.
The majority of the hymns were written during the Archaic period, from the 7th to the 5th century BC. A few shorter poems belong to the Hellenistic era, and the “Hymn to Ares” was probably composed during Roman times. The Homeric Hymns were dedicated to Zeus, Dionysus, Ares, Athena, Pan, Hephaistos, Asclepius, Poseidon, Hera, Hestia, and other figures from Greek mythology.
Irene de Jong, Chair of Ancient Greek at the University of Amsterdam, describes the difference between the two monumental works of Homer and the Homeric Hymns:
“One of the most important differences between the Homeric epics and the Homeric hymns concerns their respective protagonists. The Homeric epics ‘are not poems about Gods but about human beings. These human beings inhabit a world of which the Gods are an unquestioned part, but still, within each epic, the Gods are there to illuminate, comment on and contrast with the depiction of human actions and the human condition.’ In the Homeric hymns the situation is the reverse: these are poems about gods, who inhabit a world ‘to which mortals are admitted only as a kind of witnesses.’”
Attribution of Homeric Hymns to Homer questioned
The author or authors of the Homeric Hymns are unknown, as are the dates they were written. Ancient writers assigned them to various authors, Homer included. The “Hymn to Demeter” is attributed to Pamphos, and the “Hymn to Apollo” to Cynaethus of Chios. However, today several scholars regard them as an anonymous collection of works.
Pindar and Thucydides assigned the “Hymn to Apollo” to Homer because of its style and length, indicating the high esteem in which the hymns were held. However, later scholars doubted Homer’s authorship.
The earliest explicit reference to one of the hymns is by Thucydides, who quotes two passages from the “Hymn to Apollo” (146-50 and 165-72). He ascribes it to Homer and calls it a prelude (Greek: προοίμιον). However, Athenaeus of Naucratis, writing in the 2nd century AD, attributes the poem to Homer or one of the Homeridae. Likewise, a scholiast to Pindar ascribes it to a rhapsode named “Cynaethus.”
Alexandrian scholars rarely mentioned the hymns, suggesting that by the Hellenistic period, if not earlier, the attribution to Homer was questioned.
The passages quoted by Thucydides from the “Hymn to Apollo” describe a Pan-Ionian festival of the god on Delos and the poet’s own request to the Delian girls—Apollo’s attendants—to commemorate him as a blind man who lives on Chios and to praise him as the best of singers. The poem is set dramatically at the festival it describes, and the poet’s claim suggests, as Thucydides infers, that the hymn was performed at poetic contests.
Tradition seems to have associated the hymns with the Homeridae, a group or guild of singers based on Chios, who claimed links with Homer either as his descendants or followers.
The most important Homeric Hymns
In his book Three Homeric Books, Dr. Nicholas Richardson, now Professor Emeritus of Merton College, Oxford, considers the most important Homeric Hymns to be those to Apollo, Hermes, and Aphrodite.
The “Hymn to Pythian Apollo” is magnificent poetry, praising the god with the sweet lyre:
“Leto’s all-glorious son goes to rocky Pytho, playing upon his hollow lyre, clad in divine, perfumed garments; and at the touch of the golden key his lyre sings sweet. Thence, swift as thought, he speeds from earth to Olympus, to the house of Zeus, to join the gathering of the other gods: then straightway the undying gods think only of the lyre and song, and all the Muses together, voice sweetly answering voice, hymn the unending gifts the gods enjoy and the sufferings of men, all that they endure at the hands of the deathless gods, and how they live witless and helpless and cannot find healing for death or defens e against old age. Meanwhile the rich-tressed Graces and cheerful Horae (seasons) dance with Harmonia and Hebe and Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, holding each other by the wrist. And among them sings one, not mean nor puny, but tall to look upon and enviable in men, Artemis who delights in arrows, sister of Apollo.”
The “Hymn to Hermes” resembles Hesiod’s Theogony in describing the birth of the multifaceted god. Because of the discreet nature of Zeus’ affair with Maia, Hermes’ birth went unnoticed in Olympus.
“Muse, sing of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia, lord of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks, the luck-bringing messenger of the immortals whom Maia bare, the rich-tressed nymph, when she was joined in love with Zeus… For then she bare a son, of many shifts, blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds among the deathless gods. Born with the dawning, at mid-day he played on the lyre, and in the evening he stole the cattle of far-shooting Apollo on the fourth day of the month; for on that day queenly Maia bare him.”
“Hymn to Aphrodite”: The love of a goddess for a mortal
The “Hymn to Aphrodite” tells how the goddess desired by all gods fell in love with a mortal man:
“And so he (Zeus) put in her heart sweet desire for Anchises who at that time among the steep hills of many-fountained Ida was tending cattle, and in shape was like the immortal gods. Therefore, when laughter-loving Aphrodite saw him, she loved him, and terribly desire seized her in her heart. She went to Cyprus, to Paphos, where her precinct is and fragrant altar, and passed into her sweet-smelling temple. There she went in and put to the glittering doors, and there the Graces bathed her with heavenly oil such as blooms upon the bodies of the eternal gods —oil divinely sweet, which she had by her, filled with fragrance. And laughter-loving Aphrodite put on all her rich clothes, and when she had decked herself with gold, she left sweet-smelling Cyprus and went in haste towards Troy, swiftly traveling high up among the clouds…
“But she herself came to the neat-built shelters, and him she found left quite alone in the homestead —the hero Anchises who was comely as the gods… And Anchises was seized with love, and said to her: “Hail, lady, whoever of the blessed ones you are that are come to this house, whether Artemis, or Leto, or golden Aphrodite, or high-born Themis, or bright-eyed Athena. Or, maybe, you are one of the Graces come hither, who bear the gods company and are called immortal, or else one of the Nymphs who haunt the pleasant woods, or of those who inhabit this lovely mountain and the springs of rivers and grassy meads. I will make you an altar upon a high peak in a far seen place, and will sacrifice rich offerings to you at all seasons. “
The “Hymn to Demeter”
The “Homeric Hymn to Demeter” is also considered one of the most important by scholars. It is a heartbreaking poem that tells how Hades, lord of the underworld, abducted the goddess Persephone and how her grieving mother, Demeter, goddess of the harvest, forced the gods to allow Persephone to return to her for part of each year.
The part where Helios, son of Hyperion, tells Demeter of the fate of her lost daughter Persephone’s fate is one of the best in the poem:
“Queen Demeter, daughter of rich-haired Rhea, I will tell you the truth; for I greatly reverence and pity you in your grief for your trim-ankled daughter. None other of the deathless gods is to blame, but only cloud-gathering Zeus who gave her to Hades, her father’s brother, to be called his buxom wife. And Hades seized her and took her loudly crying in his chariot down to his realm of mist and gloom…
“But grief yet more terrible and savage came into the heart of Demeter, and thereafter she was so angered with the dark-clouded Son of Cronos that she avoided the gathering of the gods and high Olympus, and went to the towns and rich fields of men, disfiguring her form a long while. And no one of men or deep-bosomed women knew her when they saw her…”
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