Homeric Hymns

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The anonymous Homeric Hymns celebrating individual gods are a collection of ancient Greek hymns, "Homeric" in the sense that they employ the same dactylic hexameter as the Iliad and Odyssey and are couched in the same dialect. They were attributed to Homer himself in Antiquity—from the earliest written reference to them, Thucydides (iii.104)—and the label has stuck.

The oldest of them were written in the 7th century BCE, the days of Hesiod; somewhat later than the date ordinarily ascribed to the first transcriptions of Homer. This does make the oldest of the Homeric hymns among the oldest monuments of Greek literature. Though most of the Homeric hymns were composed in the Archaic period of the 7th and 6th centuries, a few may be Hellenistic, and To Ares might be a late pagan work, inserted when it was observed that a hymn to Ares was lacking.

They vary widely in length, some being as brief as three or four lines, while others are in excess of five hundred lines. The long ones comprise an invocation, praise, and narrative, sometimes quite extended. In the briefest ones, the narrative element is lacking. Most surviving Byzantine manuscripts begin with the third Hymn. A chance discovery in Moscow, 1777, recovered the two hymns that open the collection, the fragmentary To Dionysus and To Demeter in a single 15th century manuscript.

The thirty-three hymns praise most of the major gods of Greek mythology; at least the shorter ones may have served as preludes to the recitation of epic verse at festivals by professional rhapsodes. A thirty-fourth, To Hosts is not a hymn, but a reminder that hospitality is a sacred duty enjoined by the gods.

Gods who have Homeric hymns dedicated to them include:

• Aphrodite
• Apollo
• Ares
• Asclepius
• Artemis
• Athena
• Cybele
• Dionysus
• Demeter
• The Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces
• Gaia
• Helios
• Hera
• Heracles
• Hermes
• Hephaestus
• Hestia
• Pan
• Poseidon
• Pythian Apollo
• Selene
• Zeus

A recent translation joining several currently in print, with full introduction and notes, setting the hymns in their context of folklore, cult and geography, offering Near Eastern parallels, is Diane Rayor, The Homeric Hymns : A Translation, with Introduction and Notes (2004).

External links

• English etext of the Homeric Hymns at the Berkeley Sunsite
• Introduction to the Homeric Hymns A condensed version of the introduction to Diana Rayor, The Homeric Hymns : A Translation, with Introduction and Notes (2004)da:Homeriske hymner

es:Himno homérico fr:Hymnes homériques it:Inni omerici zh:荷马史诗