Ancient Greek poems composed between c. 800 BCE and c. 500 CE
The Homeric Hymns (Ancient Greek: Ὁμηρικοὶ ὕμνοι, romanized: Homērikoì húmnoi) are a collection of thirty-three Ancient Greek hymns and one epigram.[a] The Hymns praise individual deities of the Greek pantheon and retell mythological stories, often involving the deity's birth, their acceptance among the gods on Mount Olympus, or the establishment of their cult. In antiquity, the Hymns were generally, though not universally, attributed to the poet Homer: modern scholarship has established that most date to the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, though some are later in date and the latest, the Hymn to Ares, may have been composed as late as the fifth century CE.
The hymns share compositional similarities with the Iliad and the Odyssey, also traditionally attributed to Homer. They share the same artificial literary dialect of Greek, are composed in dactylic hexameter, and make use of short, repeated phrases known as formulae. It is unclear how far writing, as opposed to oral composition, was involved in their creation. They may originally have served as preludes to the recitation of longer poems, and have been performed, at least originally, by singers accompanying themselves on a lyre or other stringed instrument. Performances of the Hymns may have taken place at sympotic banquets, religious festivals and royal courts.
There are references to the Hymns in Greek poetry from around 600 BCE; they appear to have been used as educational texts by the early fifth century BCE, and to have been collected into a single corpus after the third century CE. Their influence on Greek literature and art was comparatively small until the third century BCE, when they were used extensively by Alexandrian poets including Callimachus, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes. They were also an influence on Roman poets, such as Lucretius, Virgil, Horace and Ovid. In late antiquity, they influenced both pagan and Christian literature, and their collection as a corpus likely dates to this period. They were comparatively neglected during the Byzantine period, though they continued to be copied in manuscripts of Homeric poetry; all of the surviving manuscripts of the Hymns date to the fifteenth century. They were also read and emulated widely in fifteenth-century Italy, and indirectly influenced Sandro Botticelli's painting The Birth of Venus.
The Hymns were first published in print by Demetrios Chalkokondyles in 1488–1489.[b] George Chapman made the first English translation of the Hymns in 1642. The rediscovery of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter in 1777 led to a resurgence of European interest in the Hymns. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used the Hymn to Demeter as an inspiration for his 1778 melodrama Proserpina. The Hymns were also influential on the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century, particularly Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Their influence has also been traced in the novels of James Joyce, the poetry of Ezra Pound, the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the novel Coraline by Neil Gaiman.
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The HomericHymns (Ancient Greek: Ὁμηρικοὶ ὕμνοι, romanized: Homērikoì húmnoi) are a collection of thirty-three Ancient Greek hymns and one epigram. The...
Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used in the Iliad, Odyssey, and HomericHymns. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting...
1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. HomericHymn 3 to Apollo in The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G....
1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. HomericHymn 2 to Demeter, in The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G...
Library. Evelyn-White, Hugh, The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. HomericHymns. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard...
7th century BC HomericHymns. In HomericHymn 4 to Hermes describes the god's birth and his theft of Apollo's sacred cattle. In this hymn, Hermes is invoked...
Despite their traditional name, the HomericHymns have no direct connection with Homer. The oldest are choral hymns from the earlier part of the so-called...
1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. HomericHymn to Demeter (2), in The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G...
through omega) HomericHymn 2 to Demeter in The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. HomericHymns. Cambridge,...
Library. Evelyn-White, Hugh, The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. HomericHymns. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard...
number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including the HomericHymns, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, several epigrams, the Little Iliad...
fertility goddess and resurrection deity. One of the most notable HomericHymns, the HomericHymn to Demeter, tells the story of Persephone's abduction by Hades...
Hera (/ˈhɛrə, ˈhɪərə/; Greek: Ἥρα, translit. Hḗrā; Ἥρη, Hḗrē in Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women, and family, and the protector...
Library. Evelyn-White, Hugh, The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. HomericHymns. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard...
survive through a manuscript which also contained the HomericHymns, the Orphic Argonautica, and the hymns composed by Callimachus and Proclus. At the beginning...
annoyance at Juno's having intruded into his domain. A hymn to Poseidon included among the HomericHymns is a brief invocation, a seven-line introduction that...
Helios and Eos. She was, however, the subject of one of the thirty-three HomericHymns, which gives the following description: And next, sweet voiced Muses...
The story of the birth of Aeneas is told in the HomericHymn to Aphrodite, one of the major HomericHymns. Aphrodite has caused Zeus the king of the Gods...
William Heinemann, Ltd. Evelyn-White, H.G. (1914) HomericHymn to Demeter (2), in The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G...
1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. HomericHymn 3 to Apollo, in The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G....
as summarized in American Journal of Archaeology 19 (1915), p. 485. HomericHymns 4.5 Apollodorus, 3.10.2 Ormand, Kirk (2012). A Companion to Sophocles...
Library. Evelyn-White, Hugh, The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. HomericHymns. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard...
Library. Vol. I , Vol. II at the Internet Archive. HomericHymn to Hermes (4), in The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G...
Library. Greek text available from the same website. HomericHymn 31 to Helios, in The HomericHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G...