(fl 128 bce). Athenian composer of paeans and prosodia. An inscription found at Delphi which can be dated precisely to 128 bce contains a lengthy composition, embodying both of these forms, provided with instrumental notation. A separate but related inscription testifies that it was performed in the same year. Two introductory lines identify it as a ‘paean and prosodion to the god [Apollo] which was composed and provided with kithara accompaniment by Limenius of Athens, son of Thoenus’. A second inscription, perhaps made ten years earlier, contains a paean and hyporcheme (huporchēma) to Apollo in vocal notation. The name of the composer is effaced and only the ostensible adjective ‘Athenian’ remains. It has, however, recently been proposed (see Bélis) that this second inscription was composed by a certain Athenaeus and that the two paeans are contemporary. In any event, the two works are now commonly known as the Delphic Hymns.
A separate inscription from Delphi identifies Limenius as a performer on the kithara. As a professional musician taking part in the Pythaïs (the theōria, or liturgical embassy, to the cult centre of Pythian Apollo at Delphi), he was required to belong to one of the guilds of the Artists of Dionysus. Limenius's membership was based on his professional status as a kitharist, and he himself wrote of the sacred ‘swarm of artists’ (‘hesmos … technitōn’) in his paean (20f), which gives an unusually detailed impression of the place of music in the liturgy. A similar phrase occurs in the companion piece (16f).
Limenius's paean and prosodion were composed in honour of the Artists of Dionysus (see Technitai), who performed it at the Pythian Festival of 128 bce. Elpinikos and Cleon, already encountered as leaders of the boys' choir at the games of 138 bce, are named in the festival decree, as is a certain Philion. The paean itself extends to 33 lines of cretic and paeonic rhythm, after which the prosodion begins a new rhythmic pattern. The three large sections of the paean – providing an invocation, a narrative of several deeds of Apollo, and a final prayer to Apollo, Artemis and Leto – are subdivided into smaller sections that modulate back and forth between Lydian and Hypolydian tonoi. The tone of the text is elevated, as would be expected of a paean, and musical allusions abound. At one point (if the reconstruction of the text is correct), the images employed for the aulos and the kithara in the previous paean are reversed: now it is the kithara that provides the ‘coiling mele’, while the aulos produces a honeyed song with a sweet voice. The final section of the paean tells of the slaying of Tityus by Apollo and the unsuccessful attack on Delphi by the Gauls, both of which recall the very end of the first Delphic hymn. The prosodion provides a closing prayer, in which the Greek gods Apollo, Artemis and Leto are appropriated for the protection of the Roman Empire. The correspondence between accentual and melodic pitch in this paean – as in some other late Greek musical compositions – probably reflects an archaicizing tradition.
See also Hymn, §I.
T. Reinach: Les hymnes delphiques à Apollon avec notes musicales (Paris, 1912)
M.G. Colin: ‘L'auteur du deuxième hymne musical de Delphes’, Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1913), 529–32
P. Moens: De twee delphische hymnen met musieknoten (Purmerend, 1930)
R.P. Winnington-Ingram: Mode in Ancient Greek Music (Cambridge, 1936/R), 32ff, 45
E. Pöhlmann, ed.: Denkmäler altgriechischer Musik (Nuremberg, 1970), 58ff
A. Bélis: ‘A proposito degli “Inni delfici”’, La musica in Grecia: Urbino 1985, 205–18
M.L. West: Ancient Greek Music (Oxford, 1992), 288–308, 317–18
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 44–56
For recordings see Greece, §I (Bibliography, (ii)).
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN