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The Homeric Hymn To Aphrodite A Literary Appraisal*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Peter Walcot
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Extract

I read Greek for two reasons, firstly for professional purposes and secondly for personal pleasure. When it comes to pleasure, I constantly turn to the ‘old’ favourites, to Homer, Herodotus, tragedy and, more surprisingly perhaps, Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns. A continuing interest in Hesiod is easily explained: it so happened that when I went up to University College London in the Fall of 1949, I commenced my studies by attending a course of lectures on Hesiod's Works and Days and these were delivered by the most exciting teacher in the Classics Department, T.B.L. – Tom – Webster. The impression made by the lectures was so great that I found myself, and still find myself, enthralled by the poet from Boeotia. An enthusiasm for the Homeric Hymns came later; it is not the fact that I enjoy the hymns that others seem to regard as a little eccentric but my strong preference for the Hymn to Aphrodite. Is this, I can feel colleagues wondering, a consequence of the contemporary craze for ‘Women's Studies’ even among – or is it especially among – classicists? Let me hastily assure you that it is not: I enjoy the Hymn to Aphrodite because of what I believe to be its outstanding literary qualities, and these are qualities that have been increasingly acknowledged in the last dozen or so years.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , October 1991 , pp. 137 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

NOTES

1. Friedrich, , The Meaning of Aphrodite (Chicago and London, 1978), p. 65Google Scholar; West, in Dover, K. J. (ed.), Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford, 1980), p. 23Google Scholar; cf. also West, , Hesiod, Theogony (Oxford, 1966), note on v. 1009 (p. 433).Google Scholar, who remarks: ‘the story of Anchises’ union with Aphrodite is delightfully told in the hymn to Aphrodite’; Smith, , Nursling of Mortality (Frankfurt, Bern, Cirencester, 1981), p. 2Google Scholar; Janko, , Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns (Cambridge, 1982), p. 151Google Scholar.

2. Kirk, in Easterling, P. E. and Knox, B. M. W. (edd.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature I: Greek Literature (Cambridge, 1985), p. 116Google Scholar; Levi, Peter, The Pelican History of Greek Literature (Harmondsworth, 1985), p. 62Google Scholar.

3. Beye, , Ancient Greek Literature and Society (Ithaca and London, 2nd edition 1987), p. 73Google Scholar.

4. The solitary study of the Hymn in depth as ‘literature’ in recent years is that by Podbielski, Henryk, La Structure de l'Hymne homérique à Aphrodite à la lumiére de la Tradition liltéraire (Archiwum Filologiczne XXVII, 1971)Google Scholar. While I have much sympathy with the proposition that ‘le poete a base la structure de sa narration, entre autres, sur l'exploitation humoristique de la convention generique de Phymne’ (p. 95), the author reads too much, and too frequently, between the lines and indulges in ill-conceived speculation, often at considerable length. Totally bizarre, in my opinion, is the argument of Bickerman, E. J., Athenaeum 54 (1976), 229–54Google Scholar, who sees in the Hymn evidence of romantic love, although Eck, J. van, The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (dissertation, Utrecht, 1978)Google Scholar also can claim that ‘the description of the seduction of Anchises and the following love-scene bears a romantic character’ (pp. 3–4; cf. also the note on vv. 143–67 [p. 55]). Even more surprisingly van Eck believes the ‘humorous tone’ of the DiosApate in the Iliad and of Demodocus' song in the Odyssey (see below) is lacking, before concluding that ‘the problem of love is treated as a serious subject’ (p. 4). A detailed critique of van Eck, mainly with a linguistic emphasis, is provided by Ben, N. van der, Mnemosyne 39 (1986), 1ff.Google Scholar; when it comes to romantic love, see van der Ben on vv. 153–4 (18–19). On romantic love in antiquity in general, see Rudd, Niall, Ramus 10 (1981), 140–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar and my own comments in Ancient Society 18 (1987), 5ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and on erotic ananke in the Hymn, Parry, Hugh, Phoenix 40 (1986), 253ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. More helpful is Sowa, Cora Angier, Traditional Themes and the Homeric Hymns (Chicago, 1984)Google Scholar who considers the Hymn in a chapter headed ‘Seduction’ (pp. 67–94).

Interesting on points of detail but too readily distracted from main issues and far too serious – ‘the hymn, for all its risque charm and wit, offers an etiological myth that explains why those splendid but problematic Mischwesen, whom the Greeks called heroes and demigods, no longer exist in the world as we know it’ (pp. 169–70) – is the analysis of the poem by Clay, Jenny Strauss, The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns (Princeton, 1989), pp. 152ffGoogle Scholar. Van der Ben also believes that the hymn answers the question ‘why are there no longer men with one immortal parent, whereas they abound in epic poetry’ (note on vv. 247–8 - p. 31), but such an aetiology is hardly obvious and has to be forcibly extracted from the text. I am not conscious of having derived much profit from Bergren, Ann L. T., Classical Antiquity 8 (1989), 1–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who finds the aetiology of the Hymn to Aphrodite ‘ambiguous’. It will have been noted that Clay is another who refers to the hymn's ‘charm’ (cf. p. 155 also).

5. Thus Preziosi, P. G., HSCP 71 (1966), 171ffGoogle Scholar. and Pellizer, Ezio, QUCC 27 (1978), 115ffGoogle Scholar.

6. Smith, , op. cit, p. 5Google Scholar; cf. Segal, Charles, CW 67 (1973–1974), 205–12Google Scholar, Tragedy and Civilization (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), pp. 22–4Google Scholar, and Arethusa 19 (1986), 37ff.Google Scholar, and King, Helen, Arethusa 19 (1986), 15ffGoogle Scholar. On Tithonos and the tettix see Ben, van der, Lampas 14 (1981), 104 n. 42Google Scholar.

7. For the Homeric background to Demodocus' song see Burkert, Walter, RM 103 (1960), 130ffGoogle Scholar. and, on its immediate relevance to Odyssey 8, Edinger, Harry G., Humanities Assoc. Review 31 (1980) 45–52Google Scholar, Braswell, B. K., Hermes 110 (1982), 129–37Google Scholar, Newton, Rick M., CJ 83 (1987), 12–20Google Scholar, Olson, S. Douglas, Arethusa 22 (1989), 135ff.Google Scholar, and Brown, Christopher G., Phoenix 43 (1989), 283ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note also how Andersen, Øivind in Bremer, J. M., deJong, I. J. F. and Kalff, J. (edd.), Homer: beyond OralPoetry (Amsterdam, 1987)Google Scholar claims that ‘Demodocus’ story of Ares and Aphrodite is – by contrast – thematically related to the basic Odyssean theme of conjugal love and faithfulness’ (p. 9).

8. On the ‘recurrent leitmotiv of Agamemnon's return and its consequences’, see West, Stephanie, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey vol. I (Oxford, 1988), p. 60Google Scholar; on Menalaos and Helen restored to Sparta, see Schmiel, Robert, TAPA 103 (1972), 463ffGoogle Scholar. and Olson, , AJP 110 (1989), 387–94Google Scholar; and, on the general theme of unhappy love in the Odyssey, my own remarks in Euphrosyne 2 (1959), 173–9Google Scholar and, specifically on the women of the Nekuia, Northrup, Mark D., Ramus 9 (1980), 150–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to Griffin, Jasper, Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980)Google Scholar, ‘Helen, in fact, is inscrutable’ (p. 78).

9. The Thersites episode is discussed most recently by Thalmann, W. G., TAPA 118 (1988), 1–28Google Scholar.

10. Cf. Richardson, N. J., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford, 1974), pp. 56ff.Google Scholar

11. Càssola, Filipo, Inni Omerici (Milan, 2nd edition 1981), pp. 227ffGoogle Scholar. considers Aphrodite in literature and cult.

12. Cf. Tyrrell, Wm. Blake, Amazons: a Study in Athenian Mylhmaking (Baltimore and London, 1984), pp. 44ffGoogle Scholar. and Hardwick, Lorna, G&R 37 (1990), 14ffGoogle Scholar. See also Hartog, Francois, The Mirror of Herodotus (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1988), pp. 216ffGoogle Scholar. on ‘a rhetoric of otherness’ and the Amazons. For another example of a norm relating to women being reversed, see Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane, JHS 107 (1987), 152–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar on Atalanta and the erotic pursuit.

13. Janko, , Hermes 109 (1981), 19Google Scholar; cf. Kamerbeek, J. C., Mnemosyne 20 (1967), 390Google Scholar, who translates v. 40, ‘le faisant pour le moment tout a fait oublier Héra’, thus giving the whole passage ‘une couleur ironique delicieuse’.

14. See Beard, Mary, JRS 70 (1980), 24–5Google Scholar.

15. Cf. Solmsen, Friedrich, Hermes 88 (1960), 1–13Google Scholar.

16. Cf. van Groningen, B. A., La Composition litteraire archaique grecque (Amsterdam, 2nd edition 1960), p. 105Google Scholar; see also Sowa, , op. cit., pp. 53, 56 and 344Google Scholar.

17. AJP 70 (1949), 253Google Scholar; cf. also Pellizer, , op. cit, 117ffGoogle Scholar.

18. ‘The beguiling of Zeus’ is briefly but effectively analysed by Edwards, Mark W., Homer, Poet of the Iliad (Baltimore and London, 1987), pp. 247–50Google Scholar, who notes the parallel with Demodocus' song in the Odyssey and the Hymn to Aphrodite. The episode has been discussed most recently by Golden, Leon, Mnemosyne 42 (1989), 1–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mount Ida, of course, was also the setting of the Judgement of Paris.

19. Boedeker, D., Aphrodite's Entry into Greek Epic (Leiden, 1974), p. 36Google Scholar.

20. Brownmiller, Susan, Against our Will: Men, Women and Rape (Penguin edition, 1976), p. 283Google Scholar.

21. On the parallels between the encounters of Anchises and Aphrodite and of Odysseus and Nausicaa, see Keaney, John J.AJP 102 (1981), 261–4Google Scholar.

22. Cf. Smith, , op. cit., p. 50Google Scholar and my own study of Odysseus and the art of lying in Ancient Society 8 (1977), 1–19Google Scholar, to which is to be added Emlyn-Jones, C., G&R 33 (1986), 1–10Google Scholar.

23. Crucial for an appreciation of speech in epic is Griffin, J., ‘Words and Speakers in Homer’, JHS 106 (1986), 36–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Kirk, G. S., The Iliad, a Commentary Vol. II: books 5–8 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 28–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar and, in much greater detail, Lohmann, Dieter, Die Komposition derReden in derllias (Berlin, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. On ‘external analepses’ told by characters in Homer, see de Jong, , Narrators and Focalizers: the Presentation of the Story of the Iliad (Amsterdam, 1987), pp. 160ffGoogle Scholar.

25. King, , op. cit., p. 28Google Scholar.

26. On old age and the Greeks, see Minois, Georges, History of Old Age from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 43ff.Google Scholar, Falkner, Thomas M. and de Luce, Judith (edd.), Old Age in Greek and Latin Literature (Albany, 1989)Google Scholar, and Garland, Robert, The Greek Way of Life (London, 1990), pp. 242ffGoogle Scholar.

27. van Eck, , op. cit., p. 94Google Scholar; cf. van der Ben, , op. cit., 35–6Google Scholar, who prefers to solve the problems raised by vv. 274–80 by a rearrangement of the lines.

28. Schmiel, , op. cit, 468 and 469Google Scholar; see also Stephanie West's note on Od. 4.242 ff. in A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey Vol. I, pp. 208–9; cf. Goldhill, Simon, The Poet's Voice, Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 62–4Google Scholar.

29. Thus Smith, , op. cit, pp. 134–5Google Scholar.

30. Cf. Griffin, Jasper, JHS 97 (1977), 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. Parry, , op. cit, 254Google Scholar. Cf. also Henderson, Jeffrey, in Grant, Michael and Kitzinger, Rachel (edd.), Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean, Greece and Rome II (New York, 1988)Google Scholar on ‘desire and pursuit’, who remarks ‘the characteristic Greek conception of sexuality was not as the reciprocated sentiment of equal participants but as a relationship between a pursuing senior partner and a pursued junior partner. … The behaviors associated with pursuer and pursued depended entirely on gender and social status. Women could pursue other women but never men.…Care had to be taken to preserve the appearance – and as much of the reality as possible – of the gender roles conventionally assigned to males and females’ (pp. 1256–7).