We're making a transition this week moving
from the grand epic poetry that we saw in Homer and Hesiod into a different kind of
writing. We're going to have a look at the Homeric
hymns. Now, these hymns are so-called because
they're hymns. In Greek, the term hymnos, means a song in
praise of a divinity. They're called Homeric Hymns because
they're written in a Homeric style and they're actually claimed to be written by
Homer. But what we think is much more likely is
that these hymns are written by schools of people that follow Homer, and that write
hymns in his style. And as, as a kind of homage to him, they
go ahead and claim that Homer wrote their story.
It's unlikely to have been and an attempt to pass, try to pass off a kind of
plagiarized copy, to claim Homeric lineage.
Instead, it's just a claim by the author that what I'm writing is done in praise of
Homer and a way of showing honor to him. Now, the, the subject of the praise of any
of these individual divinities is the god to whom the hymn is given.
Individual hymns honor individual divinities.
We're going to get to know these divinities now and hear about what their
lives are like. They're a little different than yours and
mine. In the Theogony, we had a early precursor
of this in our course. The opening of Hesiod's four recall, is a
long story in praise of the muses where Hesiod starts off, sings, sings about
them. Tells about his personal relationship with
them. Sings about their specific ways of being
in the world. And then, he closes off his opening to the
Theogony with a praise of the muses saying, you know, goodbye, muses, and I
hope you remember me find fondly and kindly.
We'll see that these are qualities that show up in these other Homeric Hymns as
well. So, we've already kind of seen an example
of this genre in the introductory portion of the Praise of the Muses that starts off
Hesiod's Theogony. For what we are going to be reading in
this class, just two of what survived from a couple of dozen different Hymns that
survived from the antiquity. We are going to focus on just two of
these. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo and the Homeric
Hymn to Demeter. Now,4 you'll see from the large collection
of Hymns out there, there is more than one hymn to Apollo and there's more than one
hymn to Demeter. We're only in our class, we're going to
focus on the long extended ones. The short one, the short hymn to Demeter
and the short hymn to Apollo, actually very short.
You'll see clearly which ones we're talking about, we're reading the longer
ones. These hymns are two particularly rich
ones, particularly long and extended ones that survived from the corpus and give us
a window into common themes of this genre of writing.
Now, in the Hyms, we are going to see an exhibited,
A kind of style that will be reminiscent of some of the things we have seen in the
epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod. But some things are a little bit
different, Where they do indeed use the same meter
that Homer and Hesiod did, this dactylic hexameter.
There is also a similar kind of diction in the Greek.
We mentioned when we looked at Homer that, actually, Homer's language that he uses is
a little strange. It's pastiche drawn from lots of different
dialects around ancient Greeks, around the ancient Greeks.
Also, with these Homeric Hymns, they'll draw from that same kind of Homeric
register of, of, of connect dry connections between the many different
aspects of ancient Greek. We'll see some stylistic measures that are
kind of similar, too. They'll be uses of similes, some
digressions and pieces of this that we'll note as we go along.
There are narrative arts present in these hymns, some use of narrative in that
Homeric way that introduces us to really intense stories that are happening to our
characters. But oftentimes, we will see the narrative
is used more like the way that it say Hesiod uses narrative, as one device among
many to structure the kind of saying that a person wants to make,
The kind of engagement that a person wants to make with the material.
None of our poets are going to feel wedded to having to tell us some clean clear
linear story. They're just going to get all this good
stuff about this god in there that they possibly can.
We'll see some interruptions along the way.
Some digression, Insome back and forth movements in the
narrative, some non-linear things. Also Hyms like to use lists in that way
that Hesiod did. We'll see long lists of places or people
or events and those lists are again, characteristic of same kind of impulses
that drove them in Hesiod's case. An idea of total inclusiveness trying to
make sure everything is, is told. It would have also been some qualities of
the virtuosity of the poet to demonstrate, look, I can even sing this long list of
proper names from memory. And all this is going to enter into the
context of what the lists are all about. One theme that is common that we are going
to see in the stories, just like we did with Hesiod, lots of different traditions
are going to be being sewn together right before our eyes.
The poet will make reference to places that claim some direct linkage to the god
that we're studying. Say, they have a temple that exists in
their town. Lots of places might have temples that
exist to the god that we're interested in. What typically happens in a hymn is that
all of these places get some kind of calling-out in the story.
They get pulled out and fronted so that the people who have the temple to Apollo
or to Demeter or whoever the god might be in the hymn, have a chance to see their
own name of their town represented in the story.
They're going to operate according to different kinds of techniques then some of
the things that we've seen that we're going to have some direct address where we
actually talk directly to the god itself. We're going to have lots of praise so lots
of things that come out to tell us how great and grand this god is, sometimes
reliving past great things that this god has done.
We'll have some narrative elements that come in.
At the end after we're done, we're going to have a goodbye where the poet says,
please remember me fondly, divinity. I have always been nice to you, and now
also try to be nice to me. Asking for a kind of divine favor at the
end. We're going to see themes.
Characteristic and common across these different hymns.
One theme that comes out very strongly is a sense of actually getting to know the
god. It's like you're standing. you know,
Right here next to the divinity. Hello, Apollo, we're going to get a chance
to learn what it's like to be you. And what we're going to find out is that
some things that we might think in our standard intuition about the gods' lives
are actually not quite what a god's life is really like.
The god, first of all, is going to be born.
Here is Demeter. She's looking over us and keeping an eye
on us. The gods are going to be born. These gods didn't exist for all time, they
actually have a moment when they're born similarly to what we saw in Hesiod's
Theogony. Their lives are not simple and
straightforward. Typically, there's some kind of struggle.
Maybe they have to find a place to be born.
They have to find a place to live. They want to try to have temple.
Finding, they want to try to find some place on earth they can call their own
house and that requires some work. They have to convince people to build a
temple for them. They have to find an appropriate spot.
They suffer oftentimes some kind of pain or isolation as they are trying to make
their way to find these spots. They're also trying to make sure they
secure areas of their purview, so they have some exclusive claim over certain
kinds of things in the universe. Apollo is going to have a, a claim over
music, prophecy, medicine, the sun and archery.
Demeter is going to have a special claim over grain and fertility.
Finding what these things are and working them out with respect to the rest of the
divine family is going to require some doing.
It's going to take some negotiations and some moments to settle in.
Part of what this sense of belonging is going to be for these gods is they're
going to have to find, you and me, people like us, human beings, who are going to do
nice things for them, in, worship, and in ritual.
Gods, it turns out, like it, when you and I, worship them.
The ancient Greek gods really enjoy that and trying to secure a situation in which
they're going to get the kind of rituals and rites that they like is something that
is definitely built into the lives of the gods as portrayed in these Homeric hymns.
The ritual background is very important and we're going to focus in on that in the
next lecture.