Homeric Hymns

“Demeter, bringer of seasons, giver of bright gifts,

Declined to touch the couch in all its splendor,

But stood there stubborn, lovely eyes averted.

Then shrewd Iambe set a well-built stool out,

And draped a fleece the shade of silver.

Sitting on this, Demeter pulled her veil

Over her face and sat in quiet sorrow.”

When Demeter crosses the threshold into the mortal home, she resolves to give up her divine nature and connection to motherhood in its entirety. She undergoes a fall from grace and honor, from the immortal world to the mortal (though she doesn’t completely lose her divinity) to. Denied the couch, Demeter is treated as an older, mortal woman.

“I am revered Demeter. From me is given / The greatest help and joy to gods and mortals.”

In an act of rage, Demeter reclaims her goddess identity and reveals her true goddess form. She resolves to find Persephone, embracing her ties to motherhood. But she forgoes her patronage over agriculture and fertility by starting a famine.

“Now wise Persephone heard and was elated.

She eagerly got up. But canny Hades

First slipped her a sweet pomegranate kernel

To eat: he made provision that the modest

Dark-robbed Demeter could not keep her daughter.”

The pomegranate kernel forever connects Persephone to the Underworld. For one-third of the year, she will live with Hades, accounting for the barren winter seasons. The pomegranate seed symbolizes the connection between life and death, a duality reinforced by the conflict between Demeter, goddess of fertility, and Hades, god of the Underworld.

“Apollo the far-shooter I’ll fix in mind.

All gods but one rise quickly from their seats,

All but one shake while he is striding toward them

Through Zeus’s house, drawing his glittering bow.”

As the eldest and most powerful son of Zeus, Apollo represents the potential for another intergenerational conflict. The other gods shake upon Apollo’s arrival, validating his power and potential to overthrow Zeus. Zeus remains seated when Apollo enters Olympus, exerting his authority over his son.

“His father hands him nectar in a gold cup, / Greeting his cherished son. / The gods around them Can now sit down.”

Zeus’s sharing of nectar with Apollo establishes a reciprocal relationship between the two. Apollo’s status within the pantheon is solidified, and Zeus thwarts any potential conflict. Apollo decides to champion his father’s unchanging will instead of rebelling.

“And Leto swore a great, divine oath:

‘Be witness, Earth, and the wide Sky above me

And the slow Stygian stream (this is the pledge

The blessed gods hold greatest and most fearful):

Here the god’s fragrant altar and his precinct

Will always be- and you will be his favorite.’”

Leto swears a divine oath to the island Delos, the island where the first temple for Apollo is to be built. Her oath forever ties Apollo to barren landscapes, as he eventually chooses the rocky island of Crisa for his oracle of Delphi. The commonality between mother and son to build temples on barren islands showcases the unbreakable bond between mother and son.

“Since white-armed Hera’s jealousy and cunning / Kept her [the goddess of childbirth] away while Leto of the bright hair / Was laboring with a strong and perfect male child.”

Hera attempts to prolong Leto’s birth of Apollo. Jealous that Zeus fathered a son without her, Hera withholds the goddess of childbirth and labor pains, Eileithyia. The quote reflects Hera’s characteristic jealousy.

“Apollo spoke among the deathless women: / ‘I will be patron of the lyre and the curved bow, / And prophet of the changeless will of Zeus.’”

Apollo pledges his allegiance to his father, Zeus. Apollo proclaims his patronage immediately after his birth, negating any chance of rebellion or intergenerational conflict. As a champion of Zeus’s will, Apollo’s own words become an extension of his father’s. The deathless women, which refers to the immortal goddesses gathered around Leto, present the gravity and anticipation of Apollo’s addition to the pantheon. The lyre and curved bow will symbolize Apollo’s talents and ruling domains.

“But let me give you something to consider.

The stomp of speedy horses, and the mules slurping

From my holy springs, will irk you constantly.

Everyone coming here will want to ogle

Fine chariots and hear the thud of horses,

In spite of your great temple and its treasures.”

Telphusa is a river goddess who lies to Apollo so that he will not build his temple by her streams. Apollo eventually realizes her lie and cuts off her streams with his temple, earning the epithet “Telphusian”. While Apollo is initially deceived, he ultimately reestablishes his authority as the prophet of Zeus by punishing Telphusa. This quote contains the literary device of personification, which is used heavily in Greek hymns.

“The noble son

Of Zeus killed a huge snake with his stout bow there,

A savage, bloated monster, who brought outrage

Continuously against the country’s people

And slender-footed sheep—a gory curse.”

Apollo’s defeat of Pytho, the serpent who guards Typhaon, is the subsequent defeat of Hera’s rebellion against Zeus. Because Hera creates Typhaon out of jealousy toward Zeus’s affairs, Typhaon presents another potential intergenerational conflict and threatens Apollo’s status as the eldest son and prophet of Zeus. Apollo reaffirms his allegiance to his father by defeating Pytho.

“Think what I might concoct against you someday—

In fact, I’ll engineer the birth of my child,

Superb among the death-forgetting deities.

I will not shame the holy bed we share—

But neither will I enter it. I’m staying

Away from you- but still among immortals.”

Hera creates her own child independent of Zeus, Typhaon, in the hopes that he will be stronger than her husband. She gives Typhaon a serpent to raise. The serpent Pytho comes to embody Hera’s own desire to overthrow Zeus, and thus, Apollo’s defeat of Pytho also defeats Hera’s rebellion. Hera’s defining jealousy is also present.

“So guard my shrine and host the clans of mortals

Who gather here. Above all, show my purpose…

If any word or act of yours is stupid

Or criminal—this is the way with humans—

Then other men will come to be your rulers,

And by compulsion you will serve them always.

These are my words: take them to heart and guard them.”

In a scene showing mortals’ subjugation to the will of the gods, Apollo condemns the Cretan sailors to a life of servitude at the oracle of Delphi. He teaches them how to worship him and perform his rites. Apollo is presented as a self-sufficient and wealthy god whose temples garner rich offerings for the land’s inhabitants.

“Upending her, he took a grey iron chisel

And stabbed the life out of the mountain tortoise.

As when someone harassed with swarms of worries

Feels in his mind a thought that swiftly passes,

Or when the eyes send glances spinning out,

So noble Hermes planned, pronounced, performed it.”

Hermes fashions the first lyre, which he will eventually gift to his older brother, Apollo. Hermes’s connection to the mortal world and mortal desires is also evident, as he craves meat and struggles to control his urges. Hermes’s creative and playful nature also appears alongside his critical mindset, which allows him to fashion a lyre. His knowledge adds diversity to the pantheon.

“Hot for meat, he darted

From the lovely-smelling palace to a lookout.

There he devised some staggering stealth, to rival

Housebreakers in the black hours of the nighttime.”

The quote shows Hermes’s fall into mortal desires. The larger theme of the intersection between the divine world and the mortal world appears in Hermes’s crossing thresholds into Apollo’s domain. His conniving nature is also on full display, as he schemes to steal Apollo’s cattle.

“The Sun and other gods fill me with reverence:

I love you and I fear him. You yourself know

That I’m not guilty. But I’ll swear a great oath

By this attractive gate of the immortals—

And get him someday for this ruthless probing,

Even though he’s stronger. Help me, since I’m little!”

In a display of sibling rivalry, Hermes and Apollo bicker in front of their father, Zeus. Hermes spins a lie to Zeus, swearing that he did not steal Apollo’s cattle and appealing to his infancy to make Apollo appear absurd and “ruthless.” The theme of familial conflict emerges without any real threat for intergenerational conflict.

“He sang about the deathless gods and dark earth,

How they were born, what portion each was granted.

The first the son of Maia praised was Memory,

The Muses’ mother—he was one of hers.

Then Zeus’s noble child hymned the immortals

Down from the oldest, one’s birth, then another’s—

The lyre laid on his arm duly rehearsed them.”

Hermes leads Apollo to the hidden cattle. As he begins to play the lyre and recounts the entire lineage of the immortals, the song symbolizes his own addition to the pantheon and his connection to Apollo. Each brother bestows upon the other gifts; the lyre for Apollo and the whip for Hermes. Further, the lyre itself is connected to order within the pantheon: When one plays it, they sing of the origins of the gods.

“Now Zeus gave his tormentor sweet desire

For a human lover, since it was his purpose

To stamp out her immunity to mortals

And stop her ever bragging up in heaven—

With a sweet smirk, because she loves a good joke—

How she combined the gods with death-prone women

(Who then gave mortal sons to the immortals)

And goddesses with perishable lovers.

And so he made her hanker for Anchises.”

The concept of death is most prevalent in the hymn to Aphrodite. She persuades gods to fall in love with mortals who eventually die. Aphrodite tells Anchises that she will not grant him everlasting life like his great grandfather Tros, nor will she allow him to live on Olympus like his grandfather Ganymede. While the gods find the death of mortals inconvenient and tragic, Aphrodite realizes the pains of eternal life as well. Further, she does not want her shame for having slept with a mortal to be eternal either. Much like Hermes, Aphrodite falls victim to mortal temptations.

“APHRODITE. Up, sleepyhead, Dardanus’s descendent, / And figure out if this was my appearance / In front of you when I had just arrived here.”

Aphrodite reveals herself in her true goddess form to Anchises after sleeping with him, thereby forcing her will onto Anchises. She reclaims her goddess identity that she hid before entering the mortal world and caving to mortal temptations. Therefore, the revelation of her divinity is an abrupt reestablishment of order.

“[F]rom the moment that [Aeneas] sees the sunlight,

Deep-bosomed mountain nymphs will bring him up.

They live here in this high and holy mountain,

And don’t quite rank with mortals or immortals.

Their lives are long. The food they eat is holy.

And with the gods they dance enticingly.”

Nymphs represent a happy medium between the immortal gods and the mortal humans. Nymphs live long lives and eat godly food, yet they eventually perish. In being raised by nymphs, Aeneas will avoid the fate of his forefathers and live a long and honorable life. In this plan for her son—and in refusing to grant Anchises immortality—Aphrodite reestablishes the separation between mortals and immortals.

“Pitying the helmsman,

He held him back and blessed him, saying these words:

‘Don’t be afraid, since my heart knows your value…

I am roaring Dionysus, and my mother

Is Zeus’s lover Semele, child of Cadmus.”

Dionysus waits to reveal himself in his godly form until the sailors take him prisoner. He punishes the sailors who ignored the helmsman’s warnings and spares the helmsman. By manifesting his divinity to the helmsman, Dionysus reestablishes the separation between mortals and immortals.

“They called him Pan, since bliss was his pandemic.”

Pan is the son of Dryops, a sheepherder, and Hermes. The gods find his goat-like features amusing and name him Pan, meaning “all”; the word is blissful, just like Pan’s blissful ignorance of his appearance. His features represent the dichotomy between gods and nature alongside his own transgression of boundaries, like Hermes.

“He and gray-eyed Athena taught all bright works

To mortals on the earth, who made their poor homes,

Like animals, in caverns in the mountains.

But now Hephaestus, glorious in his knowledge,

Has made them skilled.”

This quote implies another intersection of the immortal world and the mortal worlds: The gods give mortals inventions that turn caves into comfortable homes, demonstrating the idea that gifts allow for gods and mortals to interact in a natural and orderly way. This hymn specifically mentions Hephaestus, god of metalworking and fire.

“A man the Muses cherish Prospers. / A voice flows from his mouth like honey.”

The Muses are goddesses of inspiration by whom all gifted poets are considered blessed. As mythical figures, the Muses’ offer insight into the Greek understanding of the origins of knowledge, presenting it as a divine gift or a blessing.