Therapne ( Ancient Greek : Θεράπνη ) was a town in ancient Laconia , within the territory of Sparta .
147-454: According to Greek mythology , its name comes from a daughter of Lelex . The place was distinguished for housing the Menelaion , a temple to Menelaus , where it was believed that the bodies of Helen of Troy and Menelaus were buried. Herodotus writes that there was a sanctuary of Helen at Therapne, and relates the tradition that a nurse went every day to that sanctuary to ask that it free
294-555: A lyre or another stringed instrument. Performances of the hymns may have taken place at sympotic banquets, religious festivals and royal courts. There are references to the Homeric 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
441-579: A pederastic light . Alexandrian poets at first, then more generally literary mythographers in the early Roman Empire, often re-adapted stories of Greek mythological characters in this fashion. The achievement of epic poetry was to create story-cycles and, as a result, to develop a new sense of mythological chronology. Thus, Greek mythology unfolds as a phase in the development of the world and of humans. While self-contradictions in these stories make an absolute timeline impossible, an approximate chronology may be discerned. The resulting mythological "history of
588-655: A Christian moralizing perspective. The discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by the German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the nineteenth century, and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in the twentieth century, helped to explain many existing questions about Homer's epics and provided archaeological evidence for many of
735-571: A collection of epic poems , starts with the events leading up to the war: Eris and the golden apple of Kallisti , the Judgement of Paris , the abduction of Helen , the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis . To recover Helen, the Greeks launched a great expedition under the overall command of Menelaus 's brother, Agamemnon, king of Argos, or Mycenae , but the Trojans refused to return Helen. The Iliad , which
882-468: A collection of the hymns and considered them Homeric in origin. The first century BCE historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus also quoted from the hymns and referred to them as "Homeric". Diodorus Siculus , another historian writing in the first century BCE, quoted verses of the first Hymn to Dionysus . The Greek philosopher Philodemus , who moved to Italy between around 80 and 70 BCE and died around 40 to 35 BCE, has been suggested as
1029-488: A combination of their name and epithets , that identify them by these distinctions from other manifestations of themselves (e.g., Apollo Musagetes is " Apollo , [as] leader of the Muses "). Alternatively, the epithet may identify a particular and localized aspect of the god, sometimes thought to be already ancient during the classical epoch of Greece. Most gods were associated with specific aspects of life. For example, Aphrodite
1176-515: A convenient framework into which to fit their own courtly and chivalric ideals. Twelfth-century authors, such as Benoît de Sainte-Maure ( Roman de Troie [Romance of Troy, 1154–60]) and Joseph of Exeter ( De Bello Troiano [On the Trojan War, 1183]) describe the war while rewriting the standard version they found in Dictys and Dares . They thus follow Horace 's advice and Virgil's example: they rewrite
1323-540: A corpus probably dates to this period. They were comparatively neglected during the succeeding Byzantine period (that is, until 1453), but continued to be copied in manuscripts of Homeric poetry; all 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 Homeric Hymns were first published in print by Demetrios Chalkokondyles in 1488–1489. George Chapman made
1470-403: A deity's iconography and responsibilities, or of aspects of human technology and culture. The hymns have been considered as agalmata , or gifts offered to deities on behalf of a community or social group. In this capacity, Claude Calame has referred to them as "contracts", by which the praise of the deity in the hymn invites reciprocity from that deity in the form of favour or protection for
1617-475: A dotted antisigma (ↄ), evidence of which can be found in surviving manuscripts of the Hymn to Apollo . The grouping of the hymns into their current corpus may date to late antiquity. References to the shorter poems as being within the corpus begin to be found in sources dating from the second and third centuries CE. The assemblage of the thirty-three hymns listed today as "Homeric" dates to no earlier than
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#17328516193401764-485: A flat disk afloat on the river of Oceanus and overlooked by a hemispherical sky with sun, moon, and stars. The Sun ( Helios ) traversed the heavens as a charioteer and sailed around the Earth in a golden bowl at night. Sun, earth, heaven, rivers, and winds could be addressed in prayers and called to witness oaths. Natural fissures were popularly regarded as entrances to the subterranean house of Hades and his predecessors, home of
1911-512: A girl from her ugliness and that one day a woman appeared who caressed the hair of the girl and pronounced that she would be the most beautiful girl in Sparta, after which the same day the appearance of the girl changed from ugly to beautiful. The lyric poet Alcman in the 7th century BCE. mentions a temple in Therapne attesting to the antiquity of the place, There was a festival at the town, which
2058-552: A god "greater than he", Zeus swallowed her. She was already pregnant with Athena , however, and she burst forth from his head—fully-grown and dressed for war. The earliest Greek thought about poetry considered the theogonies to be the prototypical poetic genre—the prototypical mythos —and imputed almost magical powers to it. Orpheus , the archetypal poet, also was the archetypal singer of theogonies, which he uses to calm seas and storms in Apollonius' Argonautica , and to move
2205-465: A journey reminiscent of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Joyce also drew upon the Hymn to Hermes in the characterisation of both Dedalus and his companion Buck Mulligan . The Cantos by Joyce's friend and mentor Ezra Pound , written between 1915 and 1960, also draw on the Homeric Hymns : Canto I concludes with parts of the hymns to Aphrodite, in both Latin and English. In modern Greek poetry,
2352-513: A limited number of gods, who were the focus of large pan-Hellenic cults. It was, however, common for individual regions and villages to devote their own cults to minor gods. Many cities also honored the more well-known gods with unusual local rites and associated strange myths with them that were unknown elsewhere. During the heroic age, the cult of heroes (or demigods) supplemented that of the gods. "The origins of humanity [were] ascribed to various figures, including Zeus and Prometheus ." Bridging
2499-400: A location in ancient Laconia is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks , and a genre of ancient Greek folklore , today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology . These stories concern the ancient Greek religion 's view of
2646-467: A lost one known by the siglum Ψ ( psi ), which probably dates to the twelfth or thirteenth century. This may be a manuscript mentioned in a letter by the humanist Giovanni Aurispa in 1424, which he stated he had acquired in Constantinople; Aurispa's manuscript has also been suggested as being Ω. As of 2016, a total of twenty-nine manuscripts of the hymns are known. Until the later twentieth century,
2793-405: A musical contest with Apollo . Ian Morris considers Prometheus' adventures as "a place between the history of the gods and that of man." An anonymous papyrus fragment, dated to the third century, vividly portrays Dionysus ' punishment of the king of Thrace , Lycurgus , whose recognition of the new god came too late, resulting in horrific penalties that extended into the afterlife. The story of
2940-454: A number of local legends became attached. The story of Medea , in particular, caught the imagination of the tragic poets. In between the Argo and the Trojan War, there was a generation known chiefly for its horrific crimes. This includes the doings of Atreus and Thyestes at Argos. Behind the myth of the house of Atreus (one of the two principal heroic dynasties with the house of Labdacus ) lies
3087-537: A poem composed around 350 CE (possibly by the poet and local politician Andronicus ) in commemoration of the mythical origins of the Egyptian city of Hermopolis Magna . The Homeric Hymns did influence the fourth-century Christian poem The Vision of Dorotheus and a third-century hymn to Jesus transmitted among the Sibylline Oracles . They may also have been a model, alongside the hymns of Callimachus, for
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#17328516193403234-451: A poem of Troy instead of telling something completely new. Homeric Hymns The Homeric Hymns ( Ancient Greek : Ὁμηρικοὶ ὕμνοι , romanised : Homērikoì húmnoi ) are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns and one epigram . The hymns praise deities of the Greek pantheon and retell mythological stories, often involving a deity's birth, their acceptance among
3381-515: A possible originator for the movement of manuscripts of the Homeric Hymns into the Roman world, and consequently for their reception into Latin literature. His own works quoted from the hymns to Demeter and Apollo . In Roman poetry, the opening of Lucretius 's De rerum natura , written around the mid 50s BCE, has correspondences with the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, while Catullus emulated
3528-615: A series of four articles in The Journal of Hellenic Studies on textual problems in the Homeric Hymns , which became the basis of the 1904 edition of the hymns he co-produced with Edward Ernest Sikes. In 1912, Allen published an edition of the hymns in the Oxford Classical Texts series. He published an updated version of his 1904 edition in 1936, co-edited with William Reginald Halliday ; Sikes refused to collaborate on it, but remained credited as an editor. The first commentary on
3675-454: A sharp distinction between oral and written composition, seeing the poems as traditional texts originating in a strongly oral culture. The name "Homeric Hymns" derives from the attribution, in antiquity, of the hymns to Homer , then believed to be the poet of the Iliad and Odyssey . The Hymn to Apollo was attributed to Homer by Pindar and Thucydides , who wrote around the beginning and
3822-499: A spirit to every aspect of nature. Eventually, these vague spirits assumed human forms and entered the local mythology as gods. When tribes from the north of the Balkan Peninsula invaded, they brought with them a new pantheon of gods, based on conquest, force, prowess in battle, and violent heroism. Other older gods of the agricultural world fused with those of the more powerful invaders or else faded into insignificance. After
3969-504: A staff. The Hymn to Apollo makes reference to a chorus of maidens on the island of Delos , the Deliades, who sang hymns to Apollo, Leto and Artemis . References to instruments of the lyre family (known interchangeably as phorminx ) occur throughout the Homeric Hymns and other archaic texts, such as the Iliad and Odyssey . These lyres generally had four strings in the early period of
4116-461: Is portrayed as a sacrificer, mentioned as a founder of altars, and imagined as a voracious eater himself; it is in this role that he appears in comedy. While his tragic end provided much material for tragedy— Heracles is regarded by Thalia Papadopoulou as "a play of great significance in examination of other Euripidean dramas." In art and literature, Heracles was represented as an enormously strong man of moderate height; his characteristic weapon
4263-608: Is set in the tenth year of the war, tells of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, who was the finest Greek warrior, and the consequent deaths in battle of Achilles' beloved comrade Patroclus and Priam 's eldest son, Hector . After Hector's death, the Trojans were joined by two exotic allies, Penthesilea , queen of the Amazons , and Memnon , king of the Ethiopians and son of the dawn-goddess, Eos . Achilles killed both of these, but Paris then managed to kill Achilles with an arrow in
4410-469: Is that "the Greek gods are persons, not abstractions, ideas or concepts." Regardless of their underlying forms, the Ancient Greek gods have many fantastic abilities; most significantly, the gods are not affected by disease and can be wounded only under highly unusual circumstances. The Greeks considered immortality as the distinctive characteristic of their gods; this immortality, as well as unfading youth,
4557-540: 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 initially have served as preludes to the recitation of longer poems, and have been performed, at least originally, by singers accompanying themselves on
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4704-573: The Chimera and Medusa . Bellerophon's adventures are commonplace types, similar to the adventures of Heracles and Theseus. Sending a hero to his presumed death is also a recurrent theme of this early heroic tradition, used in the cases of Perseus and Bellerophon. The only surviving Hellenistic epic, the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (epic poet, scholar, and director of the Library of Alexandria ) tells
4851-469: The Derveni Papyrus now proves that at least in the fifth-century BC a theogonic-cosmogonic poem of Orpheus was in existence. The first philosophical cosmologists reacted against, or sometimes built upon, popular mythical conceptions that had existed in the Greek world for some time. Some of these popular conceptions can be gleaned from the poetry of Homer and Hesiod. In Homer, the Earth was viewed as
4998-515: The Geometric period from c. 900 BC to c. 800 BC onward. In fact, literary and archaeological sources integrate, sometimes mutually supportive and sometimes in conflict; however, in many cases, the existence of this corpus of data is an indication that many elements of Greek mythology have strong factual and historical roots. Mythical narration plays an important role in nearly every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless,
5145-528: The Hellenistic and Roman ages was primarily composed as a literary rather than cultic exercise. Nevertheless, it contains many important details that would otherwise be lost. This category includes the works of: Prose writers from the same periods who make reference to myths include Apuleius , Petronius , Lollianus , and Heliodorus . Two other important non-poetical sources are the Fabulae and Astronomica of
5292-417: The Homeric Hymns for his own hymns, and is the earliest-known poet to use them as inspiration for multiple works. The hymns were also used by Theocritus , Callimachus's approximate contemporary, in his Idylls 17 , 22 and 24 , and by the similarly contemporary Apollonius of Rhodes in his Argonautica . The mythographer Apollodorus , who wrote in the second century BCE, may have had access to
5439-824: The Homeric Hymns generally place greater focus on single events than the Homeric epics, and cover a shorter span of time, resulting in what he calls a comparatively "slow" narration. Of Pallas Athena , guardian of the city, I begin to sing. Dread is she, and with Ares she loves deeds of war, the sack of cities and the shouting and the battle. It is she who saves the people as they go out to war and come back. Hail, goddess, and give us good fortune with happiness! —Hymn 11, "To Athena", translated by Hugh Evelyn-White The hymns vary considerably in length, between 3 and 580 surviving lines. They are generally considered to have originally functioned as preludes ( prooimia ) to recitations of longer works, such as epic poems . Many of
5586-503: The Homeric Hymns in his epyllion on the wedding of Peleus and Thetis . Virgil drew upon the Homeric Hymns in his Aeneid , composed between 29 and 19 BCE. The encounter in Book 1 of the Aeneid between Aeneas and his mother Venus references the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite , in which Venus's Greek counterpart seduces Aeneas's father, Anchises . Later in the Aeneid , the account of
5733-505: The Homeric Hymns received relatively little attention from classical scholars or translators. No collation of the hymns' manuscripts was made between that of Chalkokondyles in 1488 and 1749. Joshua Barnes published an edition of the hymns in 1711, which was the first to attempt to explain textual issues by citing parallels in other texts considered to be Homeric. Friedrich August Wolf published two editions, as part of larger editions of Homer, in 1794 and 1807. The first modern edition of
5880-483: The Homeric Hymns , particularly the Hymn to Hermes . The 1889 poem "Demeter and Persephone" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson , reinterprets the narrative of the Hymn to Demeter as an allegory for the coming of Christ . The Hymn to Demeter was particularly influential as one of the few sources, and the earliest source, for the religious rituals known as the Eleusinian Mysteries . It became an important nexus of
6027-510: The Homeric Hymns , particularly the five longer poems. In the second century CE, the Greek-speaking authors Lucian and Aelius Aristides drew on the hymns: Aristides used them in his orations, while Lucian parodied them in his satirical Dialogues of the Gods . In late antiquity (that is, from around the third to the sixth centuries CE), the direct influence of the Homeric Hymns
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6174-497: The Hymn to Aphrodite and the second Hymn to Dionysus . Ovid's account of the abduction of Persephone in his Fasti , written and revised between 2 and around 14 CE, likewise references the Hymn to Demeter . Ovid further makes use of the Hymn to Aphrodite in Heroides 16, in which Paris adapts a section of the hymn to convince Helen of his worthiness for her. The Odes of Ovid's contemporary Horace also make use of
6321-434: The Hymn to Ares was composed considerably later and may date from as late as the fifth century CE. Although the individual hymns can rarely be dated with certainty, the longer poems (Hymns 2–5) are generally considered archaic in date. The earliest of the Homeric Hymns were composed in a time period when oral poetry was common in Greek culture. It is unclear how far the hymns were composed orally, as opposed to with
6468-436: The Iliad and Odyssey , the hymns are composed in the rhythmic form known as dactylic hexameter and make use of formulae : short, set phrases with particular metrical characteristics that could be repeated as a compositional aid. The attribution to Homer was sometimes questioned in antiquity, such as by the rhetorician Athenaeus , who expressed his doubts about it around 200 CE. Other hypotheses in ancient times included
6615-462: The Iliad and Odyssey , the text of the Homeric Hymns was comparatively little edited by the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria. Franco Ferrari [ it ] has suggested that, throughout antiquity, manuscripts of the text may have circulated which intentionally included two different versions ("doublets") of the same word: Alexandrian scholars developed the practice of marking these with
6762-583: The Parthenon depicting the sack of Troy); this artistic preference for themes deriving from the Trojan Cycle indicates its importance to the Ancient Greek civilization. The same mythological cycle also inspired a series of posterior European literary writings. For instance, Trojan Medieval European writers, unacquainted with Homer at first hand, found in the Troy legend a rich source of heroic and romantic storytelling and
6909-679: The Peloponnesian kingdoms of Mycenae , Sparta and Argos , claiming, according to legend, a right to rule them through their ancestor. Their rise to dominance is frequently called the " Dorian invasion ". The Lydian and later the Macedonian kings, as rulers of the same rank, also became Heracleidae. Other members of this earliest generation of heroes such as Perseus, Deucalion , Theseus and Bellerophon , have many traits in common with Heracles. Like him, their exploits are solitary, fantastic and border on fairy tale , as they slay monsters such as
7056-577: The Roman culture because of the story of Aeneas , a Trojan hero whose journey from Troy led to the founding of the city that would one day become Rome, as recounted in Virgil's Aeneid (Book II of Virgil's Aeneid contains the best-known account of the sack of Troy). Finally there are two pseudo-chronicles written in Latin that passed under the names of Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius . The Trojan War cycle ,
7203-509: The origin and nature of the world ; the lives and activities of deities , heroes , and mythological creatures ; and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece, and to better understand the nature of mythmaking itself. The Greek myths were initially propagated in an oral-poetic tradition most likely by Minoan and Mycenaean singers starting in
7350-575: The 18th century BC; eventually the myths of the heroes of the Trojan War and its aftermath became part of the oral tradition of Homer 's epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey . Two poems by Homer's near contemporary Hesiod , the Theogony and the Works and Days , contain accounts of the genesis of the world, the succession of divine rulers, the succession of human ages, the origin of human woes, and
7497-551: The 1901 "Interruption" by Constantine P. Cavafy references the myth of Demophon as told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter . The first Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite has also been cited as an influence on Alfred Hitchcock 's 1954 film Rear Window , particularly for the character of Lisa Freemont, played by Grace Kelly . Judith Fletcher has traced allusions to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter in Neil Gaiman 's 2002 children's novel Coraline and its 2009 film adaptation , arguing that
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#17328516193407644-466: The Ancient Greek pantheon, poets composed the Homeric Hymns (a group of thirty-three songs). Gregory Nagy (1992) regards "the larger Homeric Hymns as simple preludes (compared with Theogony ), each of which invokes one god." The gods of Greek mythology are described as having essentially corporeal but ideal bodies. According to Walter Burkert , the defining characteristic of Greek anthropomorphism
7791-497: The Byzantine period. The surviving medieval manuscripts of the poems date to the fifteenth century and are drawn primarily from the late-antique compilation of the Homeric Hymns along with Orphic and other hymnic poetry. They all descend from a single, now-lost manuscript, known in scholarship by the siglum Ω ( omega ) and possibly written in minuscule . In fifteenth-century Italy, the hymns were copied widely. A manuscript known by
7938-549: The Greek leaders (including the wanderings of Odysseus and Aeneas (the Aeneid ), and the murder of Agamemnon) were told in two epics, the Returns (the lost Nostoi ) and Homer's Odyssey . The Trojan cycle also includes the adventures of the children of the Trojan generation (e.g., Orestes and Telemachus ). The Trojan War provided a variety of themes and became a main source of inspiration for Ancient Greek artists (e.g. metopes on
8085-468: The Greek world and noted the stories they heard, supplied numerous local myths and legends, often giving little-known alternative versions. Herodotus in particular, searched the various traditions he encountered and found the historical or mythological roots in the confrontation between Greece and the East. Herodotus attempted to reconcile origins and the blending of differing cultural concepts. The poetry of
8232-426: The Hellenistic scholiasts of Alexandria, though they were used and adapted by Alexandrian poets, particularly of the third century BCE. Eratosthenes , the chief librarian at Alexandria, adapted the Homeric Hymn to Hermes for his own Hermes , an account of the god's birth and invention of the lyre. Phainomena , a didactic poem about the heavens by Aratus , drew on the same poem. Callimachus drew on
8379-630: The Joust'), written in the 1470s by Angelo Poliziano , paraphrase the second Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite , and were in turn an inspiration for Sandro Botticelli 's The Birth of Venus , painted in the 1480s. Georgius Dartona made the first translation of the Homeric Hymns into Latin, which was published in Paris by Chrétien Wechel [ fr ] in 1538. Around 1570, the French humanist Jean Daurat gave lectures in which he advanced an allegorical reading of
8526-543: The Olympians, the Greeks worshipped various gods of the countryside, the satyr-god Pan , Nymphs (spirits of rivers), Naiads (who dwelled in springs), Dryads (who were spirits of the trees), Nereids (who inhabited the sea), river gods, Satyrs , and others. In addition, there were the dark powers of the underworld, such as the Erinyes (or Furies), said to pursue those guilty of crimes against blood-relatives. In order to honor
8673-688: The Roman writer styled as Pseudo- Hyginus , the Imagines of Philostratus the Elder and Philostratus the Younger , and the Descriptions of Callistratus . Finally, several Byzantine Greek writers provide important details of myth, much derived from earlier now lost Greek works. These preservers of myth include Arnobius , Hesychius , the author of the Suda , John Tzetzes , and Eustathius . They often treat mythology from
8820-514: The Trojan cycle, as well as the adventures of Heracles. These visual representations of myths are important for two reasons. Firstly, many Greek myths are attested on vases earlier than in literary sources: of the twelve labors of Heracles, for example, only the Cerberus adventure occurs in a contemporary literary text. Secondly, visual sources sometimes represent myths or mythical scenes that are not attested in any extant literary source. In some cases,
8967-456: The age when gods lived alone and the age when divine interference in human affairs was limited was a transitional age in which gods and mortals moved together. These were the early days of the world when the groups mingled more freely than they did later. Most of these tales were later told by Ovid's Metamorphoses and they are often divided into two thematic groups: tales of love, and tales of punishment. Tales of love often involve incest, or
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#17328516193409114-408: The allusions in the novel's text are "subliminal" but become explicit in the film. Only a few ancient papyrus copies of the Homeric Hymns are known. An Attic vase painted around 470 BCE shows a youth, seated, holding a scroll with the first two words of the second Homeric Hymn to Hermes : this has been used to suggest that the hymns were used as educational texts by this period. At least
9261-476: The appropriation or invention of some important cultural artifact, as when Prometheus steals fire from the gods, when Tantalus steals nectar and ambrosia from Zeus' table and gives it to his subjects—revealing to them the secrets of the gods, when Prometheus or Lycaon invents sacrifice, when Demeter teaches agriculture and the Mysteries to Triptolemus , or when Marsyas invents the aulos and enters into
9408-605: The army of the dead." Another important difference between the hero cult and the cult of gods is that the hero becomes the centre of local group identity. The monumental events of Heracles are regarded as the dawn of the age of heroes. To the Heroic Age are also ascribed three great events: the Argonautic expedition, the Theban Cycle , and the Trojan War . Some scholars believe that behind Heracles' complicated mythology there
9555-450: The arrival of Dionysus to establish his cult in Thrace was also the subject of an Aeschylean trilogy. In another tragedy, Euripides' The Bacchae , the king of Thebes , Pentheus , is punished by Dionysus, because he disrespected the god and spied on his Maenads , the female worshippers of the god. In another story, based on an old folktale-motif, and echoing a similar theme, Demeter
9702-577: The basis for the collection; however, the "Library" discusses events that occurred long after his death, hence the name Pseudo-Apollodorus. Among the earliest literary sources are Homer 's two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey . Other poets completed the Epic Cycle , but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no direct connection with Homer. The oldest are choral hymns from
9849-409: The beginnings of the universe in human language. The most widely accepted version at the time, although a philosophical account of the beginning of things, is reported by Hesiod , in his Theogony . He begins with Chaos , a yawning nothingness. Next comes Gaia (Earth), "the ever-sure foundation of all", and then Tartarus , "in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth", and Eros (Love), "fairest among
9996-575: The belief that the Hymn to Apollo was the work of Kynaithos of Chios , one of the Homeridae , a circle of poets claiming descent from Homer. Some ancient biographies of Homer denied his authorship of the Homeric Hymns , and the hymns' comparative absence, relative to the Iliad and Odyssey , from the work of scholars based in Hellenistic (323–30 BCE) Alexandria may suggest that they were no longer considered to be his work by this period. However, few direct statements denying Homer's authorship of
10143-502: The composition of the story of the Argonauts is earlier than Odyssey , which shows familiarity with the exploits of Jason (the wandering of Odysseus may have been partly founded on it). In ancient times, the expedition was regarded as a historical fact, an incident in the opening up of the Black Sea to Greek commerce and colonization. It was also extremely popular, forming a cycle to which
10290-447: The concept and ritual. The age in which the heroes lived is known as the Heroic age . The epic and genealogical poetry created cycles of stories clustered around particular heroes or events and established the family relationships between the heroes of different stories; they thus arranged the stories in sequence. According to Ken Dowden (1992), "there is even a saga effect: We can follow
10437-400: The culture, arts, and literature of Western civilization and remains part of Western heritage and language. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes. Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from
10584-457: The dead. Influences from other cultures always afforded new themes. According to Classical-era mythology, after the overthrow of the Titans, the new pantheon of gods and goddesses was confirmed. Among the principal Greek gods were the Olympians, residing on Mount Olympus under the eye of Zeus. (The limitation of their number to twelve seems to have been a comparatively modern idea.) Besides
10731-507: The deathless gods". Without male assistance, Gaia gave birth to Uranus (the Sky) who then fertilized her. From that union were born first the Titans —six males: Coeus , Crius , Cronus , Hyperion , Iapetus , and Oceanus ; and six females: Mnemosyne , Phoebe , Rhea , Theia , Themis , and Tethys . After Cronus was born, Gaia and Uranus decreed no more Titans were to be born. They were followed by
10878-512: The debate as to the nature of early Greek religion in early-nineteenth-century German scholarship. The anthropologist James George Frazer discussed the hymn at length in The Golden Bough , his influential 1890 work of comparative mythology and religion. James Joyce made use of the same hymn, and possibly Frazer's work, in his 1922 novel Ulysses , in which the character Stephen Dedalus references "an old hymn to Demeter" while undergoing
11025-467: The decoration of votive gifts and many other artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Epic Cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles . In the succeeding Archaic , Classical , and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an extensive influence on
11172-610: The divine-focused Theogony and Homeric Hymns in both size and popularity. Under the influence of Homer the "hero cult" leads to a restructuring in spiritual life, expressed in the separation of the realm of the gods from the realm of the dead (heroes), of the Chthonic from the Olympian. In the Works and Days , Hesiod makes use of a scheme of Four Ages of Man (or Races): Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron. These races or ages are separate creations of
11319-429: The earlier part of the so-called Lyric age . Hesiod , a possible contemporary with Homer, offers in his Theogony ( Origin of the Gods ) the fullest account of the earliest Greek myths, dealing with the creation of the world, the origin of the gods, Titans , and Giants , as well as elaborate genealogies, folktales, and aetiological myths. Hesiod's Works and Days , a didactic poem about farming life, also includes
11466-452: The end of the fifth century BCE respectively. This attribution may have reflected the high esteem in which the hymns were held, as well as their stylistic similarities with the Homeric poems. The dialect of the hymns, an artificial literary language ( Kunstsprache ) derived largely from the Aeolic and Ionic dialects of Greek, is similar to that used in the Iliad and Odyssey . Like
11613-468: The evolution of their culture, of which mythology, both overtly and in its unspoken assumptions, is an index of the changes. In Greek mythology's surviving literary forms, as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes, it is inherently political, as Gilbert Cuthbertson (1975) has argued. The earlier inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula were an agricultural people who, using animism , assigned
11760-405: The fates of some families in successive generations." After the rise of the hero cult, gods and heroes constitute the sacral sphere and are invoked together in oaths and prayers which are addressed to them. Burkert (2002) notes that "the roster of heroes, again in contrast to the gods, is never given fixed and final form. Great gods are no longer born, but new heroes can always be raised up from
11907-460: The fifth canto of his Rhododaphne , published posthumously in 1818. In January 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley made a translation of some of the shorter Homeric Hymns into heroic couplets; in July 1820, he translated the Hymn to Hermes into ottava rima . Of Shelley's own poems, The Witch of Atlas , written in 1820, and With a Guitar, to Jane , written in 1822, were most closely influenced by
12054-483: The first English translation of them in 1624. Part of their text was incorporated, via a 1710 translation by William Congreve , into George Frideric Handel 's 1744 musical drama Semele . The rediscovery of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter in 1777 led to a resurgence of European interest in the hymns. In the arts, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used the Hymn to Demeter as an inspiration for his 1778 melodrama Proserpina . Their textual criticism progressed considerably over
12201-424: The first half of the eighteenth century, Jacques Philippe d’Orville [ de ] wrote a book of notes on the text of the Homeric Hymns , in which he condemned Barnes's then-standard 1711 edition and the 1722 edition of Michel Maittaire . The first modern textual criticism of the hymns dates to 1749, when David Ruhnken published his readings of two medieval manuscripts, known as A and C. The hymns' text
12348-504: The first known representation of a myth in geometric art predates its first known representation in late archaic poetry, by several centuries. In the Archaic ( c. 750 – c. 500 BC ), Classical ( c. 480 –323 BC), and Hellenistic (323–146 BC) periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has changed over time to accommodate
12495-427: The fourth century BCE, few compositions appear to have been intended for repeat performance or long-term transmission. The Homeric Hymns may have been composed to be recited at religious festivals, perhaps at singing contests: several directly or indirectly ask the god's support in competition. Some allude to the deity's cult at a specific place and may have been composed for performance within that cult, though
12642-562: The fourth-century Christian hymns known as the Poemata Arcana , written by Gregory of Nazianzus . In the fifth century, the Greek-speaking poet Nonnus quoted and adapted the hymns; from that time onwards, other poets, such as Musaeus Grammaticus and Coluthus , made use of them. Although the Homeric Hymns were known and transmitted in the Byzantine period, they were only rarely referenced, and never quoted, in Byzantine literature. The sixth-century poet Paul Silentiarius celebrated
12789-442: 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 more recent and the latest, the Hymn to Ares , may have been composed as late as the fifth century CE. The Homeric Hymns share compositional similarities with
12936-462: The gods to support the portrayal of human affairs. The poems also make use of different narrative styles: the Homeric Hymns are unlike the Homeric epics in that they employ iterative narration (accounts of events which repeatedly or habitually occur), which is relatively rare in ancient Greek literature, within passages of singulative narration (accounts of specific events related in sequence). René Nünlist [ de ] has also suggested that
13083-466: The gods, the Golden Age belonging to the reign of Cronos, the subsequent races to the creation of Zeus . The presence of evil was explained by the myth of Pandora , when all of the best of human capabilities, save hope, had been spilled out of her overturned jar. In Metamorphoses , Ovid follows Hesiod's concept of the four ages. "Myths of origin" or " creation myths " represent an attempt to explain
13230-530: The heel. Achilles' heel was the only part of his body which was not invulnerable to damage by human weaponry. Before they could take Troy, the Greeks had to steal from the citadel the wooden image of Pallas Athena (the Palladium ). Finally, with Athena's help, they built the Trojan Horse . Despite the warnings of Priam's daughter Cassandra , the Trojans were persuaded by Sinon , a Greek who feigned desertion, to take
13377-709: The highest social prestige through his appointment as official ancestor of the Dorian kings. This probably served as a legitimation for the Dorian migrations into the Peloponnese . Hyllus , the eponymous hero of one Dorian phyle , became the son of Heracles and one of the Heracleidae or Heraclids (the numerous descendants of Heracles, especially the descendants of Hyllus —other Heracleidae included Macaria , Lamos, Manto , Bianor , Tlepolemus , and Telephus ). These Heraclids conquered
13524-420: The horse inside the walls of Troy as an offering to Athena; the priest Laocoon, who tried to have the horse destroyed, was killed by sea-serpents. At night the Greek fleet returned, and the Greeks from the horse opened the gates of Troy. In the total sack that followed, Priam and his remaining sons were slaughtered; the Trojan women passed into slavery in various cities of Greece. The adventurous homeward voyages of
13671-514: The hymns as a separate text, without the Homeric epics, was made in 1796 by Karl David Ilgen and followed by editions by August Mattiae in 1805 and Gottfried Hermann in 1806. In 1886, Albert Gemoll [ de ] published a German edition of the hymns: this was both the first modern edition in a vernacular language (that is, not in Latin) and the only edition to date that has printed digammas in their text. The present conventional order of
13818-552: The hymns can be dated to the fourth century BCE, though the Thebaid of Antimachus may contain allusions to the hymns to Aphrodite, Dionysus and Hermes. A few fifth-century painted vases show myths depicted in the Homeric Hymns and may have been inspired by the poems, but it is difficult to be certain whether the correspondences reflect direct contact with the hymns or simply the commonplace nature of their underlying mythic narratives. The hymns do not appear to have been studied by
13965-445: The hymns end with a verse indicating that another song will follow, sometimes specifically a work of heroic epic. Over time, however, at least some may have lengthened and been recited independently of other works. The hymns which currently survive as shorter works may equally be abridgements of longer works, retaining the introduction and conclusion of a poem whose central narrative has been lost. The first known sources referring to
14112-434: The hymns survive from antiquity: in the second century CE, the Greek geographer Pausanias maintained their attribution to Homer. Irene de Jong has contrasted the narrative focus of the Homeric Hymns with that of the Homeric epics, writing that the gods are the primary focus of the hymns, with mortals serving primarily to witness the gods' actions, whereas the epics focus primarily on their mortal characters and use
14259-556: The hymns was established by the Oxford edition of Alfred Goodwin in 1893, following that employed by the manuscript M: previously, the Hymn to Apollo had been placed first. Reviewing Goodwin's work in 1894, Edward Ernest Sikes judged that most of the important work on the Homeric Hymns had previously been done by German scholars, and that "little of importance" had recently been written, apart from Goodwin's edition, on them in English. In
14406-500: The hymns' composition, though seven-stringed versions became more common during the seventh century BCE. A paean , probably written in 138 BCE, mentions the accompaniment of hymnic singing with a kithara (a seven-stringed instrument of the lyre family), and contrasts this style of music with that of the aulos , a reeded wind instrument. It is unlikely that early Greek music was written down; instead, compositions were transmitted aurally and passed on through tradition. Until
14553-537: The identity of the speaker. This made the hymns suitable for recitation by different speakers and for different audiences. Jenny Strauss Clay has suggested that the Homeric Hymns played a role in the establishment of a panhellenic conception of the Olympian pantheon, with Zeus as its head, and therefore in promoting the cultural unity of Greeks from different polities . The Homeric Hymns are quoted comparatively rarely in ancient literature. There are sporadic references to them in early Greek lyric poetry , such as
14700-631: The latter did not necessarily follow from the former. They seem likely to have been performed frequently in various contexts throughout antiquity, such as at banquets or symposia . It has been suggested that the fifth hymn, to Aphrodite , could have been composed for performance at a royal or aristocratic court, perhaps of a family in the Troad claiming descent from Aphrodite via her son Aeneas . The hymns' narrative voice has been described by Marco Fantuzzi and Richard Hunter as "communal", usually making only generalised reference to their place of composition or
14847-502: The libretto in 1710; in 1744, George Frideric Handel released a version of the opera with his own music and alterations to the libretto made by an unknown collaborator, including a newly-added passage quoting Congreve's translation of the Hymn to Aphrodite . The rediscovery of the Hymn to Demeter in 1777 sparked a series of scholarly editions of the poem in Germany, and its first translations into German (in 1780) and Latin (in 1782). It
14994-426: The longer hymns seem to have been collected into a single edition at some point during the Hellenistic period (323–30 BCE). Alexander Hall has argued that Hymns 1–26, except 6 (the Hymn to Aphrodite ) and 8 (the Hymn to Ares ), were initially collected into what he calls a "proto-collection", probably no earlier than the Hellenistic period, with the remaining hymns later added as an appendix . Unlike those of
15141-576: The middle of the Archaic period, myths about relationships between male gods and male heroes became more and more frequent, indicating the parallel development of pedagogic pederasty ( παιδικὸς ἔρως , eros paidikos ), thought to have been introduced around 630 BC. By the end of the fifth-century BC, poets had assigned at least one eromenos , an adolescent boy who was their sexual companion, to every important god except Ares and many legendary figures. Previously existing myths, such as those of Achilles and Patroclus , also then were cast in
15288-564: The myth of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the mythical land of Colchis . In the Argonautica , Jason is impelled on his quest by king Pelias , who receives a prophecy that a man with one sandal would be his nemesis . Jason loses a sandal in a river, arrives at the court of Pelias, and the epic is set in motion. Nearly every member of the next generation of heroes, as well as Heracles, went with Jason in
15435-475: The mythological details about gods and heroes. The evidence about myths and rituals at Mycenaean and Minoan sites is entirely monumental, as the Linear B script (an ancient form of Greek found in both Crete and mainland Greece) was used mainly to record inventories, although certain names of gods and heroes have been tentatively identified. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth-century BC depict scenes from
15582-525: The myths of Prometheus , Pandora , and the Five Ages . The poet advises on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, rendered yet more dangerous by its gods. Lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar , Bacchylides and Simonides , and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion , relate individual mythological incidents. Additionally, myth
15729-518: The nineteenth century, particularly in German scholarship, though the text continued to present substantial difficulties into the twentieth. The Homeric Hymns were also influential on the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century, particularly Leigh Hunt , Thomas Love Peacock and Percy Bysshe Shelley . Later poets to adapt the hymns included Alfred, Lord Tennyson , and Constantine P. Cavafy . Their influence has also been traced in
15876-485: The one-eyed Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires or Hundred-Handed Ones, who were both thrown into Tartarus by Uranus. This made Gaia furious. Cronus ("the wily, youngest and most terrible of Gaia 's children") was convinced by Gaia to castrate his father. He did this and became the ruler of the Titans with his sister-wife, Rhea, as his consort, and the other Titans became his court. A motif of father-against-son conflict
16023-468: The only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus. This work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens lived from c. 180 BC to c. 125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed
16170-568: The opening of the first Hymn to Aphrodite . The first English translation of the hymns was made by George Chapman in 1624, as part of his complete translation of Homer's works. Although they received relatively little attention in English poetry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the playwright and poet William Congreve published a version of the first Hymn to Aphrodite , written in heroic couplets , in 1710. Congreve also wrote an operatic libretto , Semele , set to music by John Eccles in 1707 but never performed. Congreve published
16317-684: The origin of sacrificial practices. Myths are also preserved in the Homeric Hymns , in fragments of epic poems of the Epic Cycle , in lyric poems , in the works of the tragedians and comedians of the fifth century BC, in writings of scholars and poets of the Hellenistic Age , and in texts from the time of the Roman Empire by writers such as Plutarch and Pausanias . Aside from this narrative deposit in ancient Greek literature , pictorial representations of gods, heroes, and mythic episodes featured prominently in ancient vase paintings and
16464-490: The poems as "hymns" ( hymnoi ) date from the first century BCE. In concept, an ancient hymn was an invocation of a deity, often connected with a specific cult or sanctuary associated with that deity. The hymns often cover the deity's birth, arrival on Olympus , and dealings with human beings. Several discuss the origins of the god's cult or the founding of a major sanctuary dedicated to them. Some are aetiological accounts of religious cults, specific rituals, aspects of
16611-504: The polymath Ioannes Eugenikos in the first half of the fifteenth century, possibly in Constantinople or Italy. This manuscript preserved both the first Hymn to Dionysus and the Hymn to Demeter , but both were lost at some point after its creation and remained unknown until 1777, when the philologist Christian Frederick Matthaei discovered Μ in a barn outside Moscow. All surviving manuscripts, apart from Μ, have among their sources
16758-454: The problem of the devolution of power and of the mode of accession to sovereignty. The twins Atreus and Thyestes with their descendants played the leading role in the tragedy of the devolution of power in Mycenae. The Theban Cycle deals with events associated especially with Cadmus , the city's founder, and later with the doings of Laius and Oedipus at Thebes; a series of stories that lead to
16905-404: The restoration of Hagia Sophia by the emperor Justinian I in a poem which borrowed from the Homeric Hymn to Hermes . Later authors, such as the eleventh-century Michael Psellos , may have drawn upon them, but it is often unclear whether their allusions are drawn directly from the Homeric Hymns or from other works narrating the same myths. The hymns have also been cited as an inspiration for
17052-450: The seduction or rape of a mortal woman by a male god, resulting in heroic offspring. The stories generally suggest that relationships between gods and mortals are something to avoid; even consenting relationships rarely have happy endings. In a few cases, a female divinity mates with a mortal man, as in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite , where the goddess lies with Anchises to produce Aeneas . The second type (tales of punishment) involves
17199-575: The ship Argo to fetch the Golden Fleece. This generation also included Theseus , who went to Crete to slay the Minotaur ; Atalanta , the female heroine, and Meleager , who once had an epic cycle of his own to rival the Iliad and Odyssey . Pindar , Apollonius and the Bibliotheca endeavor to give full lists of the Argonauts. Although Apollonius wrote his poem in the 3rd century BC,
17346-559: The siglum V, commissioned by the Byzantine-born Catholic cardinal Bessarion probably in the 1460s, published the hymns at the end of a collection of the other works then considered Homeric. This arrangement became standard in subsequent editions of Homer's works, and played an important role in establishing the perceived relationship between the hymns, the Iliad and the Odyssey . The first printed edition ( editio princeps ) of
17493-457: The singer or their community. Little is known about the musical settings of the Homeric Hymns . The earliest surviving ancient Greek musical compositions date to the end of the fifth century BCE, after the composition of nearly all of the hymns. Originally, the hymns appear to have been performed by singers accompanying themselves on a stringed instrument, such as a lyre ; later, they may have been recited, rather than sung, by an orator holding
17640-483: The society while the beliefs were held. After they ceased to become religious beliefs, few would have known the rites and rituals. Allusions often existed, however, to aspects that were quite public. Images existed on pottery and religious artwork that were interpreted and more likely, misinterpreted in many diverse myths and tales. A few fragments of these works survive in quotations by Neoplatonist philosophers and recently unearthed papyrus scraps. One of these scraps,
17787-601: The stone, which had been sitting in Cronus's stomach all this time. Zeus then challenged Cronus to war for the kingship of the gods. At last, with the help of the Cyclopes (whom Zeus freed from Tartarus), Zeus and his siblings were victorious, while Cronus and the Titans were hurled down to imprisonment in Tartarus . Zeus was plagued by the same concern, and after a prophecy that the offspring of his first wife, Metis , would give birth to
17934-406: The stony hearts of the underworld gods in his descent to Hades . When Hermes invents the lyre in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes , the first thing he does is sing about the birth of the gods. Hesiod's Theogony is not only the fullest surviving account of the gods but also the fullest surviving account of the archaic poet's function, with its long preliminary invocation to the Muses . Theogony also
18081-422: The tale known to us through tragedy (e.g. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex ) and later mythological accounts. Greek mythology culminates in the Trojan War, fought between Greece and Troy , and its aftermath. In Homer's works, such as the Iliad , the chief stories have already taken shape and substance, and individual themes were elaborated later, especially in Greek drama. The Trojan War also elicited great interest in
18228-527: The theft of Hercules 's cattle by the monster Cacus is based upon that of the theft of Apollo's cattle by Hermes in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes . The Roman poet Ovid made extensive use of the Homeric Hymns : his account of Apollo and Daphne in the Metamorphoses , published in 8 CE, references the Hymn to Apollo , while other parts of the Metamorphoses make reference to the Hymn to Demeter ,
18375-570: The third century CE. Between the fourth and the thirteenth centuries CE, the Homeric Hymns were generally transcribed in an edition which also contained the Hymns of Callimachus, the Orphic Hymns , the hymns of Proclus and the Orphic Argonautica . Manuscripts of the Homeric Hymns , often bundling them with other works such as the hymns of Callimachus, continued to be made during
18522-425: The twelfth-century poetry of Theodore Prodromos . The Homeric Hymns were copied and adapted widely in fifteenth-century Italy, for example by the poets Michael Marullus and Francesco Filelfo . Marsilio Ficino made a translation of them around 1462; Giovanni Tortelli used them for examples in his 1478 grammatical treatise De Orthographia . The Stanze per la giostra [ it ] ('Stanzas for
18669-415: The use of writing, and scholars debate the degree of consistency or "fixity" likely to have existed between early versions of the hymns in performance. The debate is clouded by the impossibility of determining for certain whether a poem with characteristic features of oral poetry was in fact composed orally, or composed using writing but in imitation of an oral-poetic style. Modern scholarship tends to avoid
18816-504: The vicinity of Therapne were a place called Alesia, where tradition said that the mill had been invented and a heroon in honor of Lacedaemon . Therapne is located near the modern village of Varika. The site of the Menelaion has been excavated numerous times from the 19th century onwards (see Menelaion ). 37°03′58″N 22°27′15″E / 37.066091°N 22.454127°E / 37.066091; 22.454127 This article about
18963-564: The war of the Seven against Thebes and the eventual pillage of that city at the hands of the Epigoni . (It is not known whether the Seven figured in early epic.) As far as Oedipus is concerned, early epic accounts seem to have him continuing to rule at Thebes after the revelation that Iokaste was his mother, and subsequently marrying a second wife who becomes the mother of his children—markedly different from
19110-399: The works of James Joyce , the film Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock , and the novel Coraline by Neil Gaiman . The Homeric Hymns mostly date to the archaic period of Greek history, though they often retell much older stories. The earliest of the hymns date to the seventh century BCE; most were probably composed between that century and the sixth century BCE, though
19257-518: The works of Homer, which included the Homeric Hymns , was made by the Florence-based Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles in 1488–1489. The 1566 edition, made by Henri Estienne , was the first to include line numbers and a Latin translation. By the end of the eighteenth century, twenty-five Byzantine manuscripts were known. One, known as M or the Codex Mosquensis , was written by
19404-565: The works of Pindar and Sappho . The lyric poet Alcaeus composed hymns around 600 BCE to Dionysus and to the Dioscuri , which were influenced by the equivalent Homeric hymns, as possibly was Alcaeus's hymn to Hermes . The Homeric Hymn to Hermes also inspired the Ichneutae , a satyr play composed in the fifth century BCE by the Athenian playwright Sophocles . Few definite references to
19551-434: The world" may be divided into three or four broader periods: While the age of gods often has been of more interest to contemporary students of myth, the Greek authors of the archaic and classical eras had a clear preference for the age of heroes, establishing a chronology and record of human accomplishments after the questions of how the world came into being were explained. For example, the heroic Iliad and Odyssey dwarfed
19698-449: Was a matter of considerable scholarly attention in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. August Baumeister published an edition of the hymns in 1860, which was the first to integrate readings based on the Θ ( theta ) family of manuscripts (a sub-family of those descended from Ψ). Robert Yelverton Tyrrell wrote in 1894 that the text of the Homeric Hymns had been in a "state of chaos" before Baumeister's edition, though their text
19845-399: Was also an influence on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's melodrama Proserpina , first published as a prose work in 1778. The hymns were frequently read, praised and adapted by the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century. In 1814, the essayist and poet Leigh Hunt published a translation of the second Hymn to Dionysus . Thomas Love Peacock adapted part of the same hymn in
19992-482: Was called Meneleaeia (Μενελάεια) in honour of Menelaus and Helen. Pindar cites the place as one of the places where the Dioscuri resided. In Therapne there was also a fountain called Meseida and another called Polideucea. Near Therapne, in a place called Phoebeon, there was a temple dedicated to the Dioscuri, where epheboi were sacrificed. Also near this temple was a sanctuary of Poseidon . Other prominent places in
20139-593: Was central to classical Athenian drama . The tragic playwrights Aeschylus , Sophocles , and Euripides took most of their plots from myths of the age of heroes and the Trojan War. Many of the great tragic stories (e.g. Agamemnon and his children, Oedipus , Jason , Medea , etc.) took on their classic form in these tragedies. The comic playwright Aristophanes also used myths, in The Birds and The Frogs . Historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus , and geographers Pausanias and Strabo , who traveled throughout
20286-454: Was comparatively limited until the fifth century. The Hymn to Hermes was a partial exception, as it was frequently taught in schools. It is possibly alluded to in an anonymous third-century poem praising a gymnasiarch named Theon, preserved by a papyrus fragment found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt and probably written by a student for a local festival. It also influenced the "Strasbourg Cosmogony",
20433-478: Was insured by the constant use of nectar and ambrosia , by which the divine blood was renewed in their veins. Each god descends from his or her own genealogy, pursues differing interests, has a certain area of expertise, and is governed by a unique personality; however, these descriptions arise from a multiplicity of archaic local variants, which do not always agree with one another. When these gods are called upon in poetry, prayer, or cult, they are referred to by
20580-592: Was probably a real man, perhaps a chieftain-vassal of the kingdom of Argos . Some scholars suggest the story of Heracles is an allegory for the sun's yearly passage through the twelve constellations of the zodiac. Others point to earlier myths from other cultures, showing the story of Heracles as a local adaptation of hero myths already well established. Traditionally, Heracles was the son of Zeus and Alcmene , granddaughter of Perseus . His fantastic solitary exploits, with their many folk-tale themes, provided much material for popular legend. According to Burkert (2002), "He
20727-432: Was relatively 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 , Catullus , Virgil , Horace and Ovid . In late antiquity ( c. 200 – c. 600 CE ), they influenced both pagan and Christian literature, and their collection as
20874-511: Was repeated when Cronus was confronted by his son, Zeus . Because Cronus had betrayed his father, he feared that his offspring would do the same, and so each time Rhea gave birth, he snatched up the child and ate it. Rhea hated this and tricked him by hiding Zeus and wrapping a stone in a baby's blanket, which Cronus ate. When Zeus was full-grown, he fed Cronus a drugged drink which caused him to vomit, throwing up Rhea's other children, including Poseidon , Hades , Hestia , Demeter , and Hera , and
21021-583: Was searching for her daughter, Persephone , having taken the form of an old woman called Doso, and received a hospitable welcome from Celeus , the King of Eleusis in Attica . As a gift to Celeus, because of his hospitality, Demeter planned to make his son Demophon a god, but she was unable to complete the ritual because his mother Metanira walked in and saw her son in the fire and screamed in fright, which angered Demeter, who lamented that foolish mortals do not understand
21168-560: Was still considered problematic at the turn of the 20th century: Thomas Leyden Agar wrote in 1916 of the "manifold and manifest" errors of tradition in the hymns. In 1984, Bruno Gentili [ it ] suggested that variations found in the manuscript tradition as to the reading of particular passages may have been considered equally-correct alternations ( adiaphoroi ) available to a rhapsode, and therefore that attempts to discriminate between them in modern editions were misguided. Between 1894 and 1897, Thomas William Allen published
21315-571: Was the bow but frequently also the club. Vase paintings demonstrate the unparalleled popularity of Heracles, his fight with the lion being depicted many hundreds of times. Heracles also entered Etruscan and Roman mythology and cult, and the exclamation "mehercule" became as familiar to the Romans as "Herakleis" was to the Greeks. In Italy he was worshipped as a god of merchants and traders, although others also prayed to him for his characteristic gifts of good luck or rescue from danger. Heracles attained
21462-431: Was the goddess of love and beauty, Ares was the god of war, Hades the ruler of the underworld, and Athena the goddess of wisdom and courage. Some gods, such as Apollo and Dionysus , revealed complex personalities and mixtures of functions, while others, such as Hestia (literally "hearth") and Helios (literally "sun"), were little more than personifications. The most impressive temples tended to be dedicated to
21609-499: Was the subject of many lost poems, including those attributed to Orpheus, Musaeus , Epimenides , Abaris , and other legendary seers, which were used in private ritual purifications and mystery-rites . There are indications that Plato was familiar with some version of the Orphic theogony. A silence would have been expected about religious rites and beliefs, however, and that nature of the culture would not have been reported by members of
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