Poems addressed to various Greek deities, employing Homeric diction and composed in dactylic hexameter for solo recitation. The corpus of 33 poems, compiled at an unknown date and mistakenly ascribed to Homer, contains four long hymns ranging in length from 293 to 724 verses and dating from about 650 to 400 bce. The other 29 hymns are much shorter and were written somewhat later. Since the ancient sources refer to the hymns as prooimia (preludes) and several of the pieces contain a promise to sing another song, it has been suggested that the hymns once served as introductions to longer epic poems. But this opinion has been contested, especially in the case of the four long hymns. Little is known about the circumstances of performance, although the poems were probably recited in poetic competition at religious festivals. Thucydides (iii.104) describes the festival of Apollo at Delos, including two quotations from the hymn To Apollo. Most of the hymns consist merely of invocation and praise of their addressees, but the longer hymns are narrative and relate a myth central to the god’s identity. The hymn To Hermes tells of the birth of Hermes, his invention of the lyre and his presentation of this newly crafted instrument to Apollo, with whom it was afterwards associated. Several of the hymns also contain references to the social and religious uses of music in the Archaic and classical Greek world.
T.W. Allen, W.R. Halliday and E.E. Sikes, eds.: The Homeric Hymns (Oxford, 1904, 2/1936/R)
A. Barker, ed.: Greek Musical Writings, i: The Musician and his Art (Cambridge, 1984), 38–46
G.S. Kirk: ‘The Homeric Hymns’, Greek Literature, ed. P.E. Easterling and B.M.W. Knox (Cambridge, 1985), 110–16
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999)
MICHAEL W. LUNDELL