Garcia. Action in The Homeric Himns PDF

Symbolic Action in the Homeric Hymns: The Theme of Recognition
Author(s): John F. Garca

Source: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 21, No. 1 (April 2002), pp. 5-39
Published by: University of California Press
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JOHN F. GARCI
A
Classical Antiquity. Volume 21, Number 1, pages 539. ISSN 0278-6656(p); 1067-8344 (e).
Copyright 2002 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
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Symbolic Action in the Homeric Hymns:
The Theme of Recognition
Was ihm heilig ist, will das Volk nicht nur glauben,
sagen und singen, sondern auch schauen.
What had the Homeric Hymns to do with rituals? The question still bedevils
us, even after several recent studies have rendered the consensus of modern
scholarship on these mysterious and beautiful texts more secure than ever.
1
Points
of contact and discontinuity between literary and cultic hymns are more nely
adumbrated;
2
the formal constituents of the Hymns have been traced and retraced;
3
we have even come to appreciatebetter late than neverthe folly of attempting
I owe substantial improvements in this essay to my colleague Mary Depew and the members of
the Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry at the University of Iowa; John Keaney (Princeton); and
the anonymous readers for this journal. A graduate assistant, Lara Aho, made numerous editorial
corrections. This essay will eventually form part of a larger work on early Greek song and rite.
1. Above all Calame 1995; Clay 1989, 1997; Ca`ssola 1975, whose text I quote (with due
consideration of other editors), provides a thorough scholarly apparatus up-to-date for its day; Allen,
Halliday, and Sikes 1936 remains valuable. On hymns in general, there are several recent survey
articles: Bremer 1981, 1998a; Furley 1981, 1997; Burkert 1994. Important works considering hymn
and prayer together are Depew 2000; Paz de Hoz 1998; Pulleyn 1997. In this essay, the Hymns
stands for the Homeric Hymns; hymn(s) is used for the generic. The epigraph is taken from
Usener 1913: 422.
2. Bremer opp. citt.; Furley 1981, 1995. These articles all assume a clear division between
cultic and literary hymns; in his Neuer Pauly article, Furley 1997 sets out the distinction graphically,
devoting a separate section to each. Fro hder 1994 goes so far as to suggest that the formthough
not the cultic functionof the rhapsodic hymns is borrowed from (choral) cult hymn and, thus
disembodied, became the stuV of song competitions; cf. Koller 1956. Earlier work, e.g., Meyer 1933
and Norden 1913, tended to emphasize similarities, as does Calame 1995.
3. Most recently Frohder 1994: 1789 (cf. tables, 37082); Janko 1981; Race 1982; and
Pavese 1991 (motivic structure). Earlier: Meyer 1933; Ludwich 1908 (consecutive readings with
classical antiquity Volume 21/ No. 1/ April 2002 6
to sever sacred too cleanly from secular poetic experience in archaic Greece.
4
We are passing through a new phase in the study of the Hymns, in which scholars
are beginning to direct their attention away from the purely formal studies that
have tended to mark most of the last two centuries work and instead are growing
interested in how the Hymns functioned in their original social context. The new
orientation allows for a more decisive statement on the ritual operation that the
Hymns carry out, and how it is that they do so: the operation is the achievement of
a gods presence, and the means by which it is achieved is symbolic action. The
purpose of this paper will be to defend this claim by examining a central thematic
constituent of hymnic poetry, what I shall call the theme of recognition (before
revelation).
The value of ethnographic autopsy and contact with informants is manifest:
if we had those methods at our disposal, they would help us establish the
exact social context of the Hymns performance (festival, private audience,
etc.), mode of presentation (rhapsodic or aoidic; sung, chanted, or declaimed;
danced to or performed with accompanying mime or ritual motion), instrumental
accompaniment (lyre, kithara, unaccompanied voice), audience, geographical
setting, and social ramications of performances.
5
For evidence on these facets
of performance, students of the Hymns have had to lean heavily on certain
internal indications, every word of which carries interpretative diYculties. In
some shorter Hymns, for example, the hymnist seems to refer to some kind of
singing competition (most clearly at VI.1920); in the Hymn to Hermes, the
young god sings just like a boy in a singing match (IV.54-56), which could very
well be an instance of that way Greek poets have, especially perhaps Pindar,
of glorifying themselves by association. But do these references compel us to
generalize a particular agonistic situation across the other Hymns?
6
It is a sign
of our ignorance about the public context of the Hymns that the best recent literary
study devoted to these poems, that of J. S. Clay, has it that they are documents
containing some of the most sustained and systematic theological speculation
of the archaic period, while arguing simultaneously that they were performed
comparison to later imitations); Bo hme 1937 (applying C. Aufelds tripartite analysis of prayer,
which many still follow); Norden 1913.
4. Easterling 1985, justly approved by Bremer 1998a: 514. Indeed, recent work by Connor
(1988) and Morris (1993) tends to support a view of early Greek religion as a pervasive aspect of
the manifold facets of Greek life, especially public activity (this in contrast to its position in many
modern Western societies; cf. Bremmer 1994: 24). Some older works sought the origins of epic
in religious ceremony. See Usener 1913; Thomson 1965: 463500; Koller 1956; Kullmann 1956;
Lange 1960. Simple evolutionism is now out of favor.
5. The need for these factors in determining genre is well emphasized by Cassio 1991. Studies
such as Janko 1981, excellent in its way, have sometimes caused a misleading equation of form
with genre.
6. Some would draw distinctions in function between long, middling, and short Hymns: Paz de
Hoz 1998; Allen, Halliday, and Sikes 1936; Clay 1997, v. next n.
garca: Symbolic Action in the Homeric Hymns 7
at aristocratic banquets as after-dinner entertainment.
7
The evidence we gain of
such entertainment from the Odyssey is perhaps not so powerful as to preclude
theological speculation from such a scene, but it does not make it especially
plausible either. And Clays own book compiles persuasive evidence that the
Hymns do much more than entertain and, in the end, has the eVect of arguing
against such a function.
Still, something tells us that the Hymns are, in some non-trivial sense,
religious texts. But what exactly does this mean? To some extent, of course,
we must grapple with terminology and take a stand on what we mean by hymn,
prooimion, etc.
8
Most scholars abide by a minimalist denition of hymn, one that
accommodates the Homeric Hymns: a hymn is a song of praise to a god.
9
But if
literary hymns are distinct fromcultic ones, where does praise t into religious
observance outside of cult, or more broadly, where does it t into religious practice
at all? Are we in danger here of retrojecting a Judeo-Christian notion of worship
(and perhaps a mystical one at that)? Plato, of course, thought praise of the
gods was a good thing, but the contexts in which he promotes it are surely no
guide to archaic hymnic usageor do we wish to assume that they are? Another
problem: to many, the purely literary nature of the hymns of Callimachus stands
in contrast to the Homeric Hymns, but just how is left unclear. Thus Burkert can
say that Kallimachos . . . prasentiert . . . Dichtungen, die sich teilweise an die
Homerischen Hymnen anlehnen, doch dem realen Kult entruckt sind und das
Go ttliche aus poetischem Bewutsein, nicht selten auch aus ironischer Distanz
gestalten.
10
Implicit here is the assumption that the Homeric Hymns were
indeed attached dem realen Kult, though the same author says, in almost the
same breath, [j]edenfalls handelt es sich bei diesen Gedichten evidentermaen
um Einleitungen, prooimia, zu altepischen Rezitationen, situationsgebundene n
Vorspru chen. . . .
11
But if the Homeric Hymns are attached to cult, precisely
how are prooimia imagined to function in it? When questions such as these
are not easily answered, scholars sometimes withdraw into vagueness: We may
view[the hexameter prooimion] partly as a devotional piece designed to secure the
favour of a god for the poets performance, and partly as a rst taste of the poets
7. Clay 1989: 267 (quotation), 7 (performance at banquets). Professor Clay has now modied
this position: long hymns represent an autonomous genre of hexameter epos, developing alongside,
and complementary to, heroic epic (1997: 498). I embrace much of her discussion but will dissent
from this particular view.
8. Costantini and Lallot 1987; Aloni 1980 explore the semantic development of the key terms;
the term hymnos is studied by Wunsch and more recently by those mentioned in n. 1 (above). For the
etymology of mnoj, see, in addition to the standard etymological lexica, Pavese 1991: 156.
9. Thus, among recent scholars, Depew 1997: 231; Fro hder 1994 (Preislied passim); Furley
1995: 32; Calame 1995: 4, 15 (where he proposes replacing epica pars with epica laus); but the
designation is ancient, dating at least to Plato. Bremer 1998b considers the hymns function as
oVering of thanksgiving. See further n. 1, above.
10. Burkert 1994: 11.
11. Ibid.: 10.
narrative prowess designed to impress the audience.
12
On the question of religious
or cultic function, a formulation like this is neither objectionable nor informative
(devotional piece?). Still, in spite of some dissent,
13
a seemingly invulnerable
consensus has built up around the ancient designation of the Hymns, strongly
reaYrmed for modern scholars by F. A. Wolf, as just what the term prooimion
suggests, namely something that preceded the singing of a heroic om.
14
Calame has rightly emphasized the continuity in form and function between
cult- and rhapsodic hymn.
15
We may, for certain purposes, draw a distinction
between them, as Bremer and Furley do; but it does not follow that the Homeric
Hymns were either secular, in any useful sense, or remote from ritual practice,
as literary texts.
16
Cult hymns are identied as such by the context in which
they were inscribed or in which a poet has asked us to imagine them performed;
17
whereas the extent of our testimonial evidence for the Homeric Hymns relates
to their function as prooimia alone, not to specic functions in cult or rite.
18
Nevertheless, it is my contention here that elements of ritualized discourse in the
Hymns point directly to ritual motivation and function and that these elements
can still be partially recovered through an attentive reading of the texts. The
kind of reading I oVer here can compensate somewhat for the lack of external
testimonial evidence proving specic cult function. To be sure, my results will not
yield anything like a ritual narrativeno script or librettoof the kind sometimes
12. Furley 1995: 27. Elsewhere in the essay he expresses further uncertainty: Their [the
Hymns] content may give us authentic material about a god and his attendant myths, but the context
of their performance seems distinct from worship proper (p. 29).
13. Allen, Halliday, and Sikes 1936: xciv; Clay 1989: 3V.
14. Prolegomena ad Homerum (Berlin, 1795) 106107 = 8182 Peppmuller = Wolf 1985: 112
13. Cf. testt. 2224 Bohme 1937: 2324, in which ancient scholars etymologize the term thus;
defended by Aloni 1980, who discusses the relevant external evidence; also in favor are the authors
of the basic reference articles (see above, n. 1). Paz de Hoz 1998, writing quite recently, joins those
who insist that not all of our Homeric Hymns need be assigned the same function of prooimion
before a performance of epic poetry. Rather, the short Hymns bear a consistent resemblance to cult
prayers, especially as represented in lyric poetry, and must have served as prooimia, whereas the
longer hymns are expansions of the essential prayer material, . . .que se han desarrollado cuando
la ocasion justica un canto auto nomo y del que se pueda disfrutar por s mismo, i.e., having been
developed for occasions that called for an independent song that could be enjoyed in its own right
(65). Though I do not see an essential functional diVerence between the Hymns of various size (see,
e.g., Koller 1956), I admire Pazs insistence on the role of the audience in shaping genres of song (see
esp. 5051, 65).
15. 1995: 45.
16. A point that Bremer 1998a: 513 of course appreciates. However, even while we must
welcome the new Bremer-Furley collection of cult texts, it would be a pity if it had the eVect of
perpetuating the unfortunate dichotomy between truly religious, authentic religious texts on the
one hand (the cult hymns) and literary, articial texts on the other (e.g., the Homeric Hymns).
17. Furley 1995: 37.
18. The testimonia are gathered and discussed in Wunsch 1916; Allen, Halliday, and Sikes
1936: lxiv-xcv; Bohme 1937; Ca`ssola 1975: xii-xvi; Aloni 1980. See also Herington 1985 and, in
general, Kannicht 1996. Calame 1995 is, to my mind, the best summary discussion of the internal
evidence for performance.
produced by the Cambridge Ritualists; as Calame has recently reaYrmed, mapping
narrative directly onto rite must be abandoned as bad method.
19
I hope to show that the Hymns do perform a ritual function basic to all
public ceremonies in early Greece: the ritual achievement of divine presence.
The god is brought by the hymnist into attendance not via explicit klesis (as
happens in prayer and cultic hymn), nor by the use of apostrophe or Du-stil;
rather, he is summoned by symbolic means. Instead of calling out hither!
come! or join us! or addressing the god directly as you who . . ., the
hymnist was charged with achieving the gods presence through narrative. It was
a mark of his authority that he could tell us about the gods, follow them through
their deeds and misdemeanors, and convey to his audience their very words;
20
it was a mark of his skill as a singer that he could achieve klesis with a story.
This is the kind of narrative power that investigators of magical texts have seen
in the historiolae, or eVective stories, found in incantations.
21
Practitioners
of magic in the Mediterranean basinvery prominently in Egypt, but also in
Greece and among early Christians and othersat times inserted small-scale
narratives into therapeutic messages with the apparent intention of establishing
an analogical relation between narrated situations and acts, on the one hand, and
the real outcome desired, on the other. The social group(s) that formed community
with such practitioners clearly represented them as aVecting (or even eVecting)
reality through narrative for the duration of the performance.
22
Students of magic have often found it useful to draw on the work of S. J.
Tambiah, who produced several perceptive studies of speech and action in magical
and other ritual practice.
23
The achievements of his work lie in two main areas.
19. Calame 1996, esp. 16273, 44749; both arise from a societys symbolic systems, though
interaction is obviously possible. The priority of ritual was famously insisted on by Robertson Smith
in his Lectures on the Religions of the Semites (1st ser., 1889); Douglas 1996 endorses Robertson
Smith from a modern anthropological position.
20. Graf 1991: 192; 1997: 218, 220 similarly argues that in magical texts the cataloguing of
cult-titles and the rehearsal of attributes conferred credit and authority on the sorcerer, just as the
pars epica did on the hymnist.
21. The historiolae in magical texts have been dened as short stories recounting mythical
themes that sympathetically persuade the suVerers illness to cease (Kotansky 1991: 112); the
classic discussion is Heim 1892: 495507. For a ne recent synthesis, see Frankfurter 1995; cf.
Usener 1913: 423; Graf 1997: 22429. Frohder 1994: 1735 and Furley 1995: esp. 39, 40, 42 have
found similar conventions in cult hymn, but neglect of this function in the Homeric Hymns has
been prolonged by the articial division between hymnic types, to which I referred above.
22. I can only note in passing the parallel presented by the historical part of prayers, sometimes
introduced by e pote (if ever I roofed your temple, etc.), which establishes a persuasive analogy
between a narrative and a hoped-for outcome.
23. Tambiah 1985c-e. (An earlier essay, 1985b, is sometimes cited in this connection; but there
Tambiah made no use of speech-act theory per se [cf. 1985c: 78]). These principles were well
applied to classical and Egyptian material by Frankfurter 1995; to Greek material by Furley 1995;
cf. Graf 1997. But see now especially a monograph devoted entirely to this aspect of the language
of curses and oaths in Homer and Greek lyric, Giordano 1999. For a thorough study of performative
utterance in ritual discourse, including an analysis of the Catholic Mass, see Werlen 1984.
First, in a critique of Malinowskis inuential theory of magical language-use,
Tambiah successfully shifted the discussion from an inherent, quasi-mystical
potency of words to their expressive contribution to the manual aspects of
ritual.
24
By symbolic means, especially metaphor and analogy, language mediates,
animates, and gives focus to the handling of materia magica. Tambiah secondly
put speech-act theory to work to describe the performative (or illocutionary) value
of magical utterances: The vast majority of ritual and magical acts combine word
and deed. Hence, it is appropriate to say that they use words in a performative or
illocutionary manner, just as the action (the manipulation of objects and persons)
is correspondingly performative.
25
In brief, speech-act theory takes a functional
approach to language-use, especially utterances whose referential content is
minimal (or nil) but whose consequences in context are nonetheless very real. Such
utterances are typically present-tense announcements of actions, made before an
audience, that are rmly bound to specic conditions of performance, such as
spatial and temporal setting, the speakers authority, the listeners acceptance
of that authority (sometimes under compulsion, as often in courtrooms), etc.
26
Given the right conditions, a well-formulated utterance of the performative
kind is empowered by social consent to bring about the very state of aVairs
of which it treats. In his study of historiolae, David Frankfurter adds a key
qualication. In the case of these narratives, analogy by itself is insuYcient.
27
The historiola is eVective . . . by becoming dynamically real within the ritual
context.
28
Thus the magical power of words (in Tambiahs phrase) can be
liberated from the manipulation of magical objects and words alone can be seen
as action. Seeing narrative in this lightand I emphasize that we are dealing
with narrative performed in ceremonial settingswill help us qualify the sharp
24. Esp. Tambiah 1985b.
25. 1985c: 80.
26. The classic discussion is J. L. Austin, How to do things with words (Oxford, 1962), though
a considerable literature has developed around his work. Recently, linguistic anthropologists have
warned of the hazard of extending Austins theory to non-English language-use (e.g. Rosaldo 1982),
and indeed Tambiah himself had to move far beyond Austins original purview. Descriptions of Greek
views about language, such as the one we are describing here, will aVect what kind of speech-acts we
attribute to the Greeks, and clearly they do not in all cases overlap well with the English speech
acts described by Austin and his successors.
27. But notice that there can be functional overlap between historiolae and the common magical
gure known as similia similibus, in which the sorcerer manipulates objects (re, dolls, small
animals), seeking to eVect a desired outcome for the patient by enunciating the analogies between
the outcome and the objects disposition. On this gure, see Graf 1997: 11874 (= ch. 5), esp.
12425; also 20533 (= ch. 7), relevant in its entirety to this discussion; Muller 1965 relates the
similia similibus gure to philosophical developments; Lloyd 1966, esp. 117209 gives general
background from early Greece and other societies.
28. Frankfurter 1995: 470. There is a parallel here in the work of Bakker 1993, 1997, who has
recently adopted the notion of activation from discourse theory to the poetics of Homeric oral
art, which shows, he nds, a strong intensication of the cognitive features . . . and social dynamics
of the ordinary spoken word (1993: 10).
modern dichotomy of magic vs. religion
29
and see, at the same time, the potent
ritual virtue of what has heretofore been complacently categorized as a literary
form, the rhapsodic Hymns.
The craft of using narrative in this way can be called symbolic action, a term
coined by the American literary critic Kenneth Burke to describe the principal
rhetorical function of spoken and written texts.
30
Burke developed a method
for analyzing textual artifacts for their dramatistic aspects, or social factors that
conditioned their meaning, which amounted to an elaborate outgrowth of classical
rhetoric.
31
Anticipating central concerns of later sociolinguistics, he spoke of the
realistic function of rhetoric, by which he meant its concrete eVect as action in
a bounded time and place: For rhetoric as such is not rooted in any past condition
of human society. It is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function
that is wholly realistic, and is continually born anew; the use of language as
a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to
symbols.
32
This is the rhetorical role of words in magical settings, where the
pragmatic sanction for this function of magic lies outside the realm of strictly
true-or-false propositions; it falls in an area of deliberation that itself draws upon
the resources of rhetoric. . . . The extraordinary character of word magic can
be explained as an attempt to produce linguistic responses in kinds of beings
not accessible to linguistic motive.
33
What will interest us in the use of the term
symbolic action will be the wholly realistic rhetoric underpinning its public use.
Burkes theoretical works have played an important role in symbolic an-
thropology. In essays collected in The Interpretation of Cultures, for example,
CliVord Geertz put Burkes thought to work in formulating methods for this new
discipline.
34
He extended Burkes metaphor, symbolic action as the dancing of
an attitude by an author in a literary work, to indicate the bodying forth through
symbolic behavior of social attitudes, tensions, hierarchies, etc.
35
Godfrey Lien-
hardt found in his study of Dinka religion that certain rites were carried out while
the eVects they were meant to produce had naturally begun to appear (the onset
29. This in fact is the cumulative eVect of Tambiahs essays cited above. See esp. 1985e; also
Graf 1997.
30. Burke 1973: 833; cf. the analysis of Hitlers Mein Kampf at 16489 and the essays in 1966.
31. Burke established a dramatistic pentad for this purpose: act, scene, agent, agency, purpose.
See 1969: xv-xxiii. He furnishes a brief intellectual history of this approach (tracing it ultimately
to Aristotle) in Burke 1968. At the center of his thought lay the act: Act is . . . a terministic center
from which many related considerations can be shown to radiate, as though it were a god-term
from which a whole universe of terms is derived (1968: 445). The terms to which he refers here
made up the critical vocabulary that he developed over a long career, whose utility remains great
in the modern study of rhetoric.
32. 1950: 43.
33. 1950: 44, 43.
34. Geertz 1973 passim.
35. 1973: 451n.40; based on Burke 1973: 912. For a collection of essays in symbolic
anthropology explicitly founded on Burke, see Sapir and Crocker 1977. Burke inuenced other
exponents of symbolic anthropology too, such as James Boon and Victor Turner.
of the rainy season, for example). In these [rites the Dinkas] human symbolic
action moves with the rhythm of the natural world around them, re-creating that
rhythm in moral terms and not merely attempting to coerce it to conformity with
human desires.
36
Again, [t]he symbolic actions . . . re-create, and even dra-
matize, situations which they aim to control, and the experience of which they
eVectively modulate. If they do not change actual historical or physical events
as the Dinka in some cases believe them to dothey do change and regulate
the Dinkas experience of those events.
37
The tendency here, as in the work
of Tambiah, is to shift emphasis from a supposed inherent, coercive power in
words onto their rhetorical, persuasive function within the group.
38
When we add
Frankfurters amendment, that the magical historiola renders actual the entities
and actions of which it tells, we can approach narrative in the Homeric Hymns
anew, as one of many symbolic means by which a specialist (for us, a hymnist)
eVects ritual action. This will provide the vital link between theories of magic and
the apprehension of the Hymns religious function.
I. RECOGNITION OF THE GOD
All hymn, then, in early Greece, was kletic. To use this term may appear
reckless at rst, because for Menander the Rhetorician, to whom we owe it,
kletic was one of many kinds of hymns.
39
But Menander, say what you will about
the value of his treatise, was interested only in what now seems a rather pedestrian
taxonomy that was meant to serve pupils of rhetoric rather than historians of
religious song.
40
I propose to borrow the word but attach its original meaning
(summoning) to the function by which all hymns achieve divine presence on
some ritual occasion. Now, this has often been claimed for prayer and cult hymn.
I hope in this study to recover a similar function in the Homeric Hymns, which
have, as I have suggested, been dangerously segregated by students of the form
as literary, rhapsodic, epic, etc.in other words, not cultic, and therefore
(it is implied) somehow inauthentic.
41
By saying that all archaic Greek hymns
were kletic, I am objecting to these distinctions and attempting to reunite the
various forms of hymn and prayer under a rubric typied by common traits that
are essential to their religious function.
36. Lienhardt 1961: 280. Emphasis in the original.
37. Lienhardt 1961: 291.
38. Tambiah 1985c: 7374 also invoked the idea of symbolic action. When the sorcerer explicitly
invokes a metaphor or analogy, of the kind just as this vine sheds leaves as it grows, so let the
peeling of your skin give life, not sickness, the utterance represents symbolic, not causal, action.
(The magical formula here is my own distillation from Tambiahs discussion.) Bjerke 1979, esp.
17475, elaborates a similar notion, symbolic magic.
39. Pp. 333, 33436 Spengel = 6, 812 Russel and Wilson 1981.
40. Russell and Wilson 1981: xi V., esp. xxix-xxxiv; Bremer 1995.
41. Where their religious authenticity is defended, as we have seen, scholars have little to say on
how they worked in ritual settings.
The models of klesis (calling forth into the presence of [a] worshipper[s]),
are prayer and cult hymn,
42
which dispose of explicit forms of direct address,
Du-Stil, apostrophe, second-person imperatives (or virtual imperatives such as
dero). The successful eVect of klesis can be shown by the actual appearance of
the god before the invoker in poetic scenes mimetic of prayer. Thus, for example,
Poseidon comes out of the sea to Pelops in Pindars Ol. 1 (7174):
. . . ggj lqn polij lj ooj n rfnai
puen barktupon
Etrainan; d ati
pr pod sxedn fnh.
Note that Pelops prayer itself, which follows this passage, begins with the request
proper: the verb puen in the passage cited (72) represents the kletic formula, itself
unquoted. A similar calling-forth from the sea is Achilleus summoning of Thetis,
Iliad 1.35156. Here, too, the actual klesis goes unquoted. The poet simply says,
poll d mhtr flhi rsato xeraj regnj (351; reg. : naptj Zen.
: nasxn cet.) before putting only ve lines into Achilleus mouth; poll,
thereforethough it can mean loudly or with heavy intentmust mean here
that Achilleus had said much before the ve-line prayer, and this unquoted portion
will have been imagined to include the summons to which Thetis then responds,
rising out of the foamy surf like a burst of seaspray (karpalmwj d ndu
polij lj t mxlh, 359); swift and absolute success indeed, for this gifted
rhetorician. It is a sign of promised success in prayer that this initial request, the
presence sought, is granted.
At times, the gods of myth roam the earth unbidden. They go among mortals
for love and revenge, to help and hinder, and to put the unsuspecting to the test.
And they are not always recognized, coming sometimes in disguise as birds or
beasts, as children or aged women.
43
Sometimes a god is recognized even before
he or she is unveiled, and due reverence, or some expression of awe, is shown
by the wisest of mortal observers or neglected by the morally oblivious. Then
the perspicacious, those mortals who acknowledge godhead in the visitor, despite
his disguise, or because of the way luminous divinity shines through it, thereafter
enjoy a privileged relationship with the deity or some supernatural recompense
(riches, success, a reward in the afterlife); whereas the oblivious or hostile must
suVer some kind of punishment or curse.
42. These have been thoroughly studied. See Norden 1913 (esp. 14376); Pulleyn 1997 takes
fresher research into account; see Depew 1997 and 2000 for engagement with current theoretical
approaches to prayer.
43. For a phenomenology of theophany, see in general Versnel 1987. For Homeric theophany
see in particular Clay 1974; Dietrich 1983; Smith 1988. D. Bremer 1975 is a stimulating study of
theophany in three of the longer Hymns and of the idea of divinity in Plato; the author is particularly
interested in the imagery of light and darkness, the hidden and revealed, and the human confronted
with the divine.
This complex of motifsdeity in disguise, recognition by a mortal (or failure
therein), and reward (or punishment)constitutes a coherent narrative pattern
that forms the basis of many scenes in the Homeric Hymns and epic.
44
The test
implied in the disguise, as well as other narrative elements, would be recognized
by folklorists as a common motif in traditional verbal art.
45
But we may avail
ourselves of analytical tools that bring us even closer to the corpus of Hymns
associated since antiquity with the name of Homer. Already, the literature on type-
scenes, motifs, themes, story patterns, and the related concepts of composition by
theme and narrative inconsistency is extensive.
46
The gains of this scholarship
will not only help us analyze the theme of recognition (before revelation) but will
allow us to treat certain of its formal features and narrative functions summarily
or allusively. On the other hand, scholars have devoted little attention to how
social meaning and action are achieved via narrative patterning, my own present
concern.
One special manifestation of the theme of recognition has received careful
attention, the so-called theoxeny, or the request by a god (sometimes more than
one) for hospitality.
47
But it is best to reserve that designation for stories about the
visits of gods to the hearths of mortals, also widely attested. In it, the banquet
44. Sowa 1984: 23672 provides a valuable collection of evidence, to which I am indebted,
though it will become clear that our paths diverge in some matters of interpretation. She believes the
epiphanies are aetiological stories and attaches great signicance to the linkage between epiphany
and the institution of cultic rites. As I will argue later, I do not regard the hymns as cult histories,
theological treatises, or the like; rather, for me their chief function is kletic.
45. S. Thompson, Motif index of folk literature (Bloomington, Ind., 19551958), H45, esp. 45.1
(under Recognition through personal peculiarities ); Flu ckiger-Guggenheim 1984 draws attention
to tale-type parallels: Aarne-Thompson, The types of the folk-tale (Helsinki, 1961) 75052 (God
repays and punishes).
46. We owe the fundamental bibliographical coverage to Mark Edwards 1992. His remarks on
terminology (285), on which there is unfortunately too little agreement, are very important. Nagler
1974, for example, used the term motif where most would now prefer type-scene (after Arend
1933); A. B. Lord applied the term theme to a range of narrative patterns larger than the line, from
type-scenes (1960: 68 etc.) to folktales and myths (284n.1), though most of his analyses too (6898)
are applied to a level most would call the type-scene. The term theme is useful, since it calls
attention to narrative patterning at various levels; I use it to indicate a bundle of narrative elements or
motifs traditionally established in a typical sequence that acts as a vessel for encoding culturally
dense meaning. A rough hierarchy of traditional verbal patterning would begin with the word and
proceed up from the formula, motif, and type scene, to the story pattern, a term normally used for the
largest order of magnitude in traditional narrative organization; see J. M. Foley 1999: 15 c. nn. Basic
works on composition by theme include Arend 1933 with Parry 1936 = 1971: 404407; A. B. Lord
1938, 1960: 6898; Hansen 1972; Gunn 1970, 1971; Nagler 1974: 64166; Edwards 1987, 1991:
1123. Powell 1977 attempts a thematic analysis of Odyssean narrative at a rather high level of
abstraction; even more abstract levels are explored by Dundes 1963 (Native American narrative) and
Bremond 1973 (general).
47. The best treatment of this theme is Flu ckiger-Guggenheim 1984; the older discussion,
Deneken 1881, is still valuable for its gathering of loci. See also Burnett 1970; Hollis 1990: 34154;
Kearns 1982; Reece 1993: 47V.; on the episode of Baucis and Philemon in Ovid (Met. VIII.611724)
and parallels, see Hollis 1970: 10612, 15153; Bomer 1977: 19096. These all mention the pattern
within discussions of theoxeny, but in my opinion, the theoxeny-pattern belongs alongside the one
itself is important, and it is bound up with the motif of mortals supping with gods,
a privilege of the most blessed, such as royal ancestors, heroes, and those who
inhabit the ends of the earth. It will become clear that the motif of theoxeny
could act symbolically, too, especially, one imagines, when it was invoked in
performance at festivals devoted to divine-human feasts.
48
The narrative pattern that I study in this paper belongs with theoxeny in the
same family of motif-bundles, but is not coextensive with it.
49
It is possible that
there is something like a genus/species relationship, though at present I see no
reason to insist on one. It will therefore suYce to observe that our pattern displays
more general characteristics than theoxeny. It has the following elements, to
which I shall refer according to the segmentation given:
50
A. Visitation and presence of a god (usually in disguise)
A.1 The god appears in disguise . . .
A.1.a . . . as a mortal
A.1.b . . . as an animal
A.1.c . . . in some other form
A.2 Verbal interaction between god and mortal(s)
B. Recognition of or failure to recognize (before revelation) a god
B.1 Failure to recognize
B.1.a Simple obliviousness
B.1.b Mistreatment of god
B.2 Recognition
B.2.a Mortal notes beauty, radiance, or miracle of god
B.2.b xare
B.2.c Mortal wonders or guesses which god
B.3 The god acknowledges recognition
B.3.a qrsei vel sim.
B.3.b God identies self (em d g . . .)
C. Retribution
C.1 The god terries or punishes the oblivious
C.1.a Terric signs
C.1.b Punishment
C.2 The perspicacious are rewarded
C.2.a Reward in life
C.2.b Reward in afterlife
discussed here under a larger rubric. This is so because many examples of the theme of recognition
are highly developed outside of theoxenic contexts.
48. Burkert 1985: 107; cf. Bruit 1989.
49. Cf. Hollis 1990: 343: Hymn II bears only a slight resemblance to the hospitality theme,
or theoxeny.
50. Sowa 1984: 251 provides a table for her diVerent emphases; Fluckiger-Guggenheim s table
1984: 1112 is a more general synopsis of divine visitation in folklore.
Notes: (1) Not all elements will be present in a given instance of the pattern;
rather, the narrator makes a selection, usually respecting the relative sequence
of the elements.
51
(2) In the theoxeny pattern, there is usually some explicit
motivation for A, such as widespread evil among mortals. In the cases that we
will examine here, the motivation itself is subordinated to the larger narrative, but
a central argument in this essay is that there is also an extra-narrative motivation
for the theme.
II. SYMBOLIC ACTION IN THE HOMERIC HYMNS
hymn vii, to dionysos
The Homeric Hymns achieve divine presence in part by raising it to a thematic
level within the narrative itself; they narrate visitation in order to secure it for
ritual purposes. This is a major internal index of the ritual nature of the hymns
occasion, and, as a feature of the poetics governing their composition, of the
situational pragmatics that are the prime justication of their formal and thematic
traits. I will discuss the importance of this observation further ahead.
The simplest illustration of this form of symbolic action may be drawn from
Hymn VII, to Dionysos. In this hymn, the singer leaps, with minimal introduction,
into an abrupt confrontation between Dionysos, who appears (fnh) in the guise
of an adolescent, and a band of pirates (txa d ndrej sslmou p nhj
lhsta prognonto; A.1.a).
52
The pirates have mischief on their minds (B.1.b).
The adolescent is hastily taken aboard and an attempt is made to bind him, but
the bands do not hold and they fall away (1314). The boy Dionysos simply sits
down, grinning eerily (1415). At this point, there is a recognition of his divinity
(1521):
kubernthj d nosaj
atka oj troisin kkleto fnhsn te;
daimnioi, tna tnde qen desmeeq lntej
kartern? od frein dnata min nhj eergj.
gr Zej de g stn, rgurtocoj Apllwn,
Poseidwn; pe o qnhtosi brotosin
ekeloj, ll qeoj o Olmpia dmat xousin.
The helmsman sees through the gods disguise only after he has performed a minor
miracle (B.2.a); the others remain blind to his divinity all the same. So deceived is
the captain, in fact, that he can suggest, to the helmsmans pleas that the god be
released (2224), that this boy was a gift to the pirates from the gods (31). The
51. Propp 1968: 2122.
52. I begin here to note thematic elements by the segmentation given above.
captains greed for ransom money blinds him to Dionysos divinity, which the
god then proceeds to demonstrate (C.1.a).
Amid the menacing roars of the bear and lion (A.1.b), all but two of the
crew leap overboard and are transformed into dolphins (C.1.b). The god (in lions
guise) throttles the captain but halts the helmsmans jump (5357):
kubernthn d lesaj
sxeqe ka min qhke panlbion ep te mqon;
qrsei, de pter, ti mi kexarismne qumi;
em d g Dinusoj rbromoj n tke mthr
Kadmhj Semlh, Dij n filthti migesa.
Not only is the steersman spared, he is rewarded for his perspicacity (C.2.a
[C.2.b?]). Taking pity on him (lesaj, 53), the god grants him the highest
blessing (sxeqe ka min qhke panlbion, 54); in his speech, he addresses the
mortal aVectionately (if Zimmermans de pter, 55, or something similar, is
right) and calls him most dear to my heart (ti mi kexarismne qumi).
All of this is ratied by the gods self-revelation (5657; B.3.b). The steersman
earns Dionysos favor by his clarity of vision, his ability to see beyond the radiant
beauty of the boy to the god within. But we should avoid the hazard of saying
that the sailor is spared because of his moral goodness, because his heart was soft,
he pitied the boy. . . . In fact, we know nothing about his moral nature, nor need
we. We know only that he had an insight: it was dangerous, deadly, to abuse this
boy. He has earned his life and happiness by recognizing divine beauty when it
was present among men.
Hymn VII gives us in brief compass the basic thematic pattern of recognition
before revelation and is remarkably complete.
53
Each of the major hymns displays
it in more or less developed form. Let us look at some of these other occurrences.
hymn iii, to apollo
The similarities between Apollos encounter with the Cretan traders and that
of Dionysos with the pirates has been remarked many times before. But it is
instructive to observe the diVerent treatment of the theme of recognition, which is
all I propose to do here. In Hymn VII, most of the pirates fail to recognize the
god and are punished; one alone does and is saved. Apollos visitation of the
maritime traders in the third Hymn, on the other hand, is motivated by his explicit
purpose of seeking out stewards for his Delphic shrine (388V.), so we may expect
them (as chosen by the god himself) to recognize him at once; but at rst they
do not, as I will show. The test to which he puts the seagoing merchants diVers
from the apparition of Dionysos in that Apollo appears to them at rst only as
a monster (an enormous dolphin [400401], A.1.b). The chance that was given
to the pirates, of gazing on a beautiful boy and seeing a god, was withheld from
53. A summary table of motifs represented in the major Hymns is given below.
the traders until after the monstrous apparition. In this important respect, then, the
two manifestations of the theme diVer, but the Hymn to Apollo recovers this motif
(A.1.b / B.2.a) later, as it were out of place (see below). Why the displacement?
The obvious distinction between the pirates of Hymn III and the merchant seamen
of Hymn VII is the diVerence between brigandage and lawful trade, but more
importantly, one alone of the pirates is chosen by Dionysos, whereas Apollo
is seeking out a group. Having selected them as his stewards the god now waylays
them; a subtler test of their perspicacity, the gods appearance as a beautiful
ephebe, will wait and be introduced later. Consider the rst appearance.
For their part, the mariners cower at once in fear: can this rst reactionvery
far from the arrogance of the piratescount as recognition? The answer may lie
concealed in a passage long considered textually corrupt. I reproduce Ca`ssolas
text and some of his apparatus (402403):
tn d j tij kat qumn pifrssaito bosai
pntos nasseaske, tnasse d na dora.
402. tn codd.: tn Weiher stij Y: e tij Ilgen otij
M G
2m
pifrssaito p (Stephanus): pifrssato x pe-
frssato At D Chalcondyles pefrsato M bosai
Bolkestein Mnemosyne 1968, p. 283: nosai codd. fobsai
van Leeuwen Mnemosyne 1911, p. 184. 403. pntos Franke:
pntoq M Q [. . .]
Scholars have evidently been at work on these two lines since ancient times. It
is often thought that the wording oVered by M, the important Mosquensis MS now
in Leiden (early 15th century), looks like a local attempt to repair the sense of
the passage. Allen supposed that the disintegration of letters in the archetype,
Y, was to blame, and he set about restoring the text. But I would suggest that
the strangeness of the thought in these lines is due to noise in the oral tradition.
The main diYculties that modern editors have quarreled over have been
the meaning of pifrssaito and the truth behind nosai. Bolkestein, whose
conjecture Ca`ssola prints, rejects the latter, reasoning that the dolphin would not
punish the crew merely for having the idea of looking at him. He proposes instead
that the crewmust have got it in their heads to shoutand this the god must punish
with his tremors (though not, for example, by striking them dumb). In so doing,
he agrees with editors since Allen in suspecting nosai and seeking to replace
it.
54
But Ca`ssola detects some weakness in Bolkesteins case and, in approving
his conjecture, would understand bosai not merely as shout (il gridare, in
se stesso, non giustica lira del dio) but shout a [nautical] command: the
god, according to Ca`ssola, makes the ship quake (every timenote the optative
54. Bolkestein 1968: 285n.1, cites T. W. Allen (JHS 15 [1895] 281) as the rst editor to suspect
nosai. See Allen, Halliday, and Sikes 1936 ad loc. for discussion of the transmitted text.
of repeated action and the v.l. pntoq) because he wants control of the ships
steerage.
55
All this appears implausible.
Given the cardinal importance of the theme of recognition in this context, we
should try to keep nosai, following the manuscripts. Let us start by transferring
our attention to the entire phrase pifrssaito nosai. Whatever it means, it
is taking place kat qumn. The expression may seem odd at rst: if a monster
has descended onto your ship, you do not think to observe or have the idea
of observingyou can hardly help doing it. But the trouble with using this kind
of reasoning, as the commentators have done (Bolkestein quotes several), is that
the phrase has a history, and to understand traditional song, we must listen beyond
the immediate context. In Homer, too, the words are paired: Alknooj d min ooj
pefrsat d nhsen (Od. 8.94 = 533). Alkinoos, in the rst of these passages,
is alone aware that as his aoidos sings of the fateful quarrel prophesied at Delphi,
Odysseus himself, one of the songs subjects, was weeping at his side; to this the
rest of the festive company are oblivious. Later in the same book, Alkinoos, again
alone among the singers audience, notices the same behavior, and this time it
prompts him to ask the stranger to reveal his identity. He has no special gift, the
poet tells us in the rst passage; rather, it is emphasized that he notices because he
cannot help but notice (Od. 8.9395):
nq llouj mn pntaj lnqane dkrua lebwn,
Alknooj d min ooj pefrsat d nhsen
menoj gx ato, bar d stenxontoj kousen.
Moreover, the king is not made to recognize Odysseus for who he is and, to
repeat, needs a second occurrence before he asks the stranger to name himself.
If we detect thematic play here, we must concede that the promise in Alkinoos
name is fullled only in that he instigates a miraculous self-revelation by the hero
so ignobly washed up on his shores.
56
A person is especially valued in heroic society whose perceptions are judged
sharp enough to nosai, as indicated for example by Iliad 1.343, od ti ode
nosai ma prssw ka pssw (Achilleus on Agamemnon). An even better
parallel to the theme of recognition is supplied by the whole speech of Diomedes
at Iliad 10.24247, in which he justies choosing Odysseus as his companion
on the night raid:
e mn d tarn ge keleet m atn lsqai,
pj n peit Odusoj g qeoio laqomhn,
o pri mn prfrwn kradh ka qumj gnwr
n pntessi pnoisi, file d Pallj Aqnh?
totou ge spomnoio ka k purj aqomnoio
mfw nostsaimen, pe per ode nosai.
55. Ca`ssola 1975 ad loc.
56. Nagy 1990 found the name to speak in just this way.
What makes Odysseus such a peerless companion is that better than others, he
has the insight to nosai. As will become increasingly clear, this last is a general
verb of perception, but especially of seeing sharply (c nhse 8 x Il.), that is,
perspicacity. Odysseus ability to recognize Athene in the Odyssey is a major
narrative topic. And the invulnerability that this implies is part of what makes his
participation crucial to the success of the dangerous mission. Diomedes cannot
have made a better choice.
Let us return to our passage in Hymn III. It is probably impossible to repair
the textual disruption to everyones satisfaction. I would simply conclude for
now with the suggestion that we retain as much of the manuscripts wording as
possible, certainly including the thematically important nosai, and seek less
drastic solutions than the one oVered by Bolkestein or his predecessors. Yet we
know from a later passage that the mariners, at 402403, do not yet know that
this is a god, for when the ship comes to Tainaros (41417):
o mn r nq qelon na sxen, d pobntej
frssasqai mga qama, ka fqalmosin dsqai
e menei nhj glafurj dapdoisi plwron,
ej odm lion poluxquon mfj rosei.
What is implied here is a distinction between seeing with the eyes and perceiving
godhead with the faculty of nhsij, not at all the same thing. The sailors want
to stop their ship and watch to see whether the monster will leap oV the deck.
It is because of this scene that I believe that the Mosquensis (and the marginal
hand in G, Bruxellensis 74) correctly preserved an original negative at line 402.
At the time of the dolphins rst appearance, the seamen did not recognize the
god; and it was because of this, presumably, that the god showed his anger by his
tremendous thrashing (C.1.a).
57
The poet has the captain realize only in retrospect
(in his speech, 473) that a god brought the Cretans unwillingly to Crisa.
It is not until the god passes through two further avatars that he is explicitly
recognized. In the rst case (A.1.c) it is the women and girls of Krisa who
acknowledge the god (B.2.a) with the lolugmj (44047):
nq k nhj rousen nac kergoj Apllwn
stri edmenoj mswi mati; to d po polla
sminqardej pwtnto, slaj d ej orann ken;
j d duton katdune di tripdwn ritmwn.
nq r ge flg daie pifauskmenoj t kla,
57. Matthiae, Hermann, Abel, Baumeister, and Evelyn-White tried to work with Ms negative
(Bolkestein 1968: 28384). The latter four accepted a lacuna of at least one line between 402403. I
am less interested in endorsing one of the these solutions speci cally than in attributing the disruption
to the narrative tension produced by the manipulation of thematic material. But the syntax is not
smooth here. If the negative and the sequence of verses are right, one would like 403 to begin, e.g.,
pnta d . . . (rather than pntos /pntoq with the manuscripts), though the omission of the new
subject (the monster) would admittedly be diYcult.
psan d Krshn ktexen slaj; a d llucan
Krisawn loxoi kallzwno te qgatrej
Fobou p ipj; mga gr doj mbal kstwi.
As Jean Rudhardt has argued, this cry very likely represents, in a cultic setting,
an acknowledgment of the gods presence.
58
But it is no simple welcome: . . .
il exprime lemotion que cette presence inspire a` lhomme et doit, par sa violence,
le rassurer quelque peu.
59
As such, it is to be echoed at the end of thisand
nearly everyhymn by the singers own emotionally charged cry of welcome,
the telltale generic sign, xare. But to that we shall return.
The passage quoted above is full of foundational signicance, but as elsewhere
in the hymns, the eVect is not explicitly, but only allusively, aetiological. After
much debate on whether the Hymns are charter myths for local festivals (e.g.,
the Ionia on Delos), or cults and shrines (of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis or
Apollo at Onchestos, Delos, and Delphi), we have little progress to show. What
seems increasingly clear, on the contrary, is the panhellenic generality of these
references.
60
The signicance of the foundational, aetiological, and originary
elements in the Hymns is not that these are cult histories; rather, the display of
arcane knowledge enables the hymnist to claim authority before his audience and
the god he invokes. Passages like the one above not only establish the standing
of the singer in dispensing knowledge of the acts of the gods and the origins of
their cults, but also constitute an announcement that he is able to produce in his
actual context some facet of the mythic reality of which he sings. The Homeric
Hymns are not works of theology or cult history: they present the god to a group
of celebrants.
Apollo makes one last appearance to mortals in Hymn III, this time in the
guise of a youth in early manhood with locks owing free (44950; A.1.a).
He addresses the mariners with the formulaic interrogation often directed towards
strangers coming in oV the high seas, and the mariners feel reassured (indexed, as
often, with the concept qrsoj, 462; B.3.a). The Cretan captain, as spokesman for
his entire crew, answers with a clear demonstration of his perspicacity (46466):
cen, pe o mn gr ti kataqnhtosin oikaj,
o dmaj od fun, ll qantoisi qeosin,
ol te ka mga xare, qeo d toi lbia doen.
Having acknowledged the youths divinity, the captain welcomes his presence
with xare (B.2.b) and makes a quaint wish, the highest a mortal can oVer.
The Cretans were selected by Apollo before they showed this perspicacity, but
now that they have done so, he may announce to them their reward (C.2.a). This is
to administer the temple of Apollo at Delphi (47879), to know the intentions
58. Rudhardt 1992: 17880.
59. 1992: 180.
60. See further below, under The Theme of Recognition in the Hymns.
of the gods, and be honored by their sanction (48385). Their correct recognition
of divine presence (albeit belated) recommends their competence to take on the
tendance of the temple and to mediate the communication to mortals of divine
will.
hymn v, to aphrodite
When the goddess Aphrodite appears before the mortal Anchises, with whom
she is enamored, the rst words out of his mouth betoken recognition of her
divinity (9299):
xare, nass , tij makrwn tde dmaq kneij,
^Artemij Lht xrush Afrodth,
Qmij genj glaukpij Aqnh,
po tij Xartwn der luqej a te qeosi
psin tairzousi ka qnatoi kalontai,
tij numfwn a t lsea kal nmontai,
numfn a kaln roj tde naietousi
ka phgj potamn ka psea poienta.
With a greeting (B.2.b) and ceremonious guesses (B.2.c), Anchises intimates
his perspicacity. In the passage that follows on this one, the poet has Anchises
anticipaterather strikinglythe goddesss self-revelation. As if she has already
conrmed his intuition, he presses on with prayers, going far beyond the love-
struck gasp you are so beautifulsurely you are a goddess? to oVer her year-
round cult observances and ask that the goddess be propitious enough to grant
him a ourishing progeny and, for himself, stature in Troy and a long life of
prosperity (lbion, 106; C.2.a-b.; cf. 195, Hymn III.54). These mimetic petitions
(102106) anticipate that real one implied in the hymnists own expert rhetorical
performancethat the goddess reward him with her advent; Anchises xare will
accordingly be echoed by the singers own pronunciation of the greeting at the
successful close of his hymn (292).
What follows is one of the most charming passages in archaic Greek literature,
Aphrodites lie.
61
The goddess must not only invent a mortal autobiography for
herself, but (what is most important) explain to Anchises how she appeared
before him from nowhere. She concedes to her dazzled lover that the agency
behind her appearance is only divine insofar as Hermes, having abducted her
from a girls chorus dedicated to Artemis, brought her, nubile, before Anchises.
So far from admitting her divinity, Aphrodite introduces the jargon of mortal
bridehood, wishing even to be taken to meet her new in-laws. Anchises responds:
If you are in fact mortal, if the mother who bore you was a woman, and if your
father was indeed well-known Otreus, as you claim, and you come here courtesy
61. Sowa 1984: 241V., perhaps rightly, counts the gods deception as an important structural
element in her discussion of the theme (or thematic cluster) Epiphany and institution of rites.
of the divine guide Hermes, then you shall be pronounced my wifetill death
do us part! (14548).
The charmof this passage is worked in part by the image of Aphrodite steering
the theme of recognition from its path before deigning to concede revelation. The
poet introduces the theme, arousing all the attendant expectations in his audience,
but then momentarily thwarts its outcome, since a self-revelation here would
obviate Zeus intention of mating the goddess with a mortal.
Momentarily: for after their lovemaking, when Anchises wakes fromthe sleep
that Aphrodite has laid on his eyes, he protests that he had recognized her divinity
from the beginning. It is a protest, one might say, as much against Zeus (and the
poet) as against the ruse of the goddess herself (18590):
atka s j t prta, qe, don fqalmosin
gnwn j qej sqa; s d o nhmertj eipej.
ll se prj Zhnj gounzomai agixoio
m me znt menhnn n nqrpoisin shij
naein, ll lair; pe o bioqlmioj nr
ggnetai j te qeaj enzetai qanthisin.
The whole sequencerecognition, deceit by the god, revelation proper, protest
makes for subtle humor, achieved in part by the transgression of the traditional
rules of the theme. To break the rules of narration is analogous to punning,
where it is the disturbance of expected sequences, and their abrupt replacement
with unexpected signicance, that stirs laughter (as in Wildes Work is the curse
of the drinking classes).
The return of conformity to those rules is announced by the simple injunction
qrsei (193; B.3.a), take heart, which gods often use to reassure cowering
mortals.
62
But this is followed by a lengthy expansion of another thematic
component, the concession of rewards (C.2). First among these, you are favored
by the gods (195; cf. Hymn VII.55), as high a prize as a mortal can hope for. This
status is brought home to Anchises by two mythological paradigms (one positive,
one negative), the stories of Ganymedes (20217) and Tithonos (21840). As
Ganymedes was granted immortality, to the joy of his bereaved father, so too
will Anchises issue be forever godlike (200201). The goddess is seemingly
reminded, by this story, of Eos love for Tithonos. This, too, happened in the
Troad; it, too, involved the abduction of a mortal favorite by a goddess. But the
paradigmatic lesson taken from it is diVerent: let this not be the way that you,
Anchises, are divinely favored; further, as Eos failed to procure eternal youth
for her favorite, so too must you suVer old age. Aphrodite thereby indicates that
Anchises reward entails a happy afterlife only in the form of the enduring fame
and power of his oVspring. Thus does the theme of recognition intersect with that
of the abduction of a favorite by a deity with consequent grant of immortality. This
62. VII.55; Il. 24.171; Od. 13.362; cf. III.462, IV.301 (in jest), Od. 4.825, 8.197, 19.546.
hymn presents a model of such conuence, and by nesting two paradigmswe
would rather say historiolaewithin the larger paradigm, the plot of the Hymn
itself, the hymnist enhances the power of his song and assures its successful
outcome.
And further nested in these hymnic designs, we now see, was that lie. Seeking
a union in love with her favorite, Aphrodite claimed that she herself had been
the apple of Hermes eyebut no, only that Hermes was meant to deliver her to
Anchises. . . (11730). The play of themes is evident if we compare to Aphrodites
lie the fate of Polymele in Iliad 16. She is the mother of the Myrmidon Eudoros
(18186):
tj d kratj Argeifnthj
rsat, fqalmosin dn met melpomnhisin
n xori Artmidoj xrushlaktou keladeinj.
atka d ej peri nabj parelcato lqrhi
Ermeaj kkhta; pren d o glan un
Edwron, per mn qeein taxn d maxhtn.
This is the familiar motif to which Aphrodite nods in her lie. The gods often
made their selection of mortal conquests from girls at dance or play, especially
at the transition rites of Artemis, when they were at their most nubile.
63
And
so the formal mythic exempla she oVers Anchises during her self-revelation bore
messages already subtly hinted at in their rst conversation. There was no denying
that Anchises had read them well from the start.
64
hymn iv, to hermes
Of all the hymns, this one represents the least contact between god and
mortal;
65
nevertheless, the old man from Onchestos, whom Hermes encounters
while absconding with Apollos oxen, presents a clear cautionary gure best
understood within the framework I am proposing. Because he does not recognize
the god Hermes, and respond to his presence accordingly, he would presumably
face punishment, were it not that this version of his story is told in such reduced
outline that we hear nothing else of him after his treachery towards Hermes.
On his way back fromPieria with the oxen, Hermes meets the old man, who is
constructing his lush vine rows. The man is an eyewitness to the theft, so Hermes
swears him to silence (8793):
tn d grwn nhse dmwn nqosan lwn
menon pedonde di Ogxhstn lexepohn;
63. Richardson 1974 ad 5 for reV.
64. Because of Aphrodites divine deceit, however, Anchises is said at rst to lie beside her,
a mortal next to a goddess, o sfa edj (167), momentarily uncertain.
65. Recognized by Sowa 1984: 238 as the least important, structurally, of all the Epiphanies of
the Hymns, since [Hymn IV] is concerned almost entirely with relationships between gods, rather
than between gods and men.
tn prteroj prosfh Mahj rikudoj uj;
gron j te fut skpteij pikamploj mouj,
poluoinseij et n tde pnta frhisi;
ka te dn m dn enai ka kwfj kosaj,
ka sign, te m ti katablpthi t sn ato.
The god says this and departs; it is not an elaborate scene. In spite of the
compressed style, though, it is plain enough that Hermes, though undisguised, has
gone unrecognized by the old man,
66
which is conrmed when Apollo interviews
him later on. The Onchestan, asked about the stolen oxen, says (20811):
pada d doca, friste, safj d ok oda, nosai,
j tij paj ma bousn kraroisin pdei,
npioj, exe de bdon, pistrofdhn d bdizen,
copsw d nerge, krh d xen nton ati.
Apollo hears this and departs; the encounter with the mortal is over. Later versions
of this story, however, such as the encounter of Mercury and Battus in Ovids
Metamorphoses 2.680V., have the god return to test the old mans delity to his
promise and punish him when he fails, and we do see a trace of this in the rst
scene, where Hermes promises to make the mans harvest abundant, provided he
keep faith (9193; C.2.a). There is no threat of retribution for treachery, and
when the Onchestan tells what he knows to Apollo, we are left to imagine the
consequences. Nevertheless, there is just enough here to claim a partial sketch
of the theme of recognition, which may give listeners the framework for lling
out the untold parts of the story.
hymn ii, to demeter
This Hymn raises peculiar diYculties in that the elements of the theme,
though clearly present, seem to be handled with great freedom. Here, more than
anywhere else in the Hymns, it is tempting to speak of narrative inconsistency,
since actions at times seem to be only half performed. But we should resist this,
because although the story pattern appears more coherently elsewhere, the Hymn
to Demeter, of all the hymns, raises it most explicitly to a governing narrative
idea. But it is combined, almost to the point of conict, with the overarching story
patterns of withdrawal and return, which have been shown to provide the larger
narrative architecture of this Hymn, and the motif of theoxeny.
67
These patterns
merge so readily with the theme of recognition because it is from the divine
to the human world that Demeter withdraws; and, as it is hinted, rewards and
66. nhse (87) can only mean perceived, but owing to its resonances, we may have irony
here. It is also possible that the presence of the verb inuenced the hint of reward that is discussed
below.
67. On withdrawal and return in this Hymn, see M. L. Lord 1994; on theoxeny, Fluckiger-
Guggenheim 1984: 81100; for further testimonia on ancient theoxenic myths about Demeter, see
Deneken 1881: 2930.
punishments are meted out according to whether mortals see her works for what
they are. No sooner does she learn the fate of Kore than she forsakes Olympos
to roam among mortals (9094), and at this point we are explicitly told, of the
goddess, that during her sojourn on earth (9497):
od tij ndrn
esorwn ggnwske baquznwn te gunaikn
prn g te d Keleoo dafronoj keto dma,
j tt Eleusnoj quosshj koranoj en.
This leads the listener to expect a recognition of Demeter, but there are com-
plexities. When the daughters of Keleos nd the old woman, they address her at
onceinnocent, however, of her identity: od gnon; xalepo d qeo qnhtosin
rsqai, and they knew her not, so diYcult are the gods for mortals to perceive
(111; B.1.a). Their rst question to her is further indicative of their ignorance
tj pqen ss grh palaigenwn nqrpwn? (113)and they continue in this
vein.
We should remember what we were told: Demeter was not to be recognized
until she reached Keleos palace. But here begin the diYculties. For whereas
the daughters of Keleos were openly said to fail in recognizing the goddess,
Metaneiras ability to do so seems to be admitted at rst and then withdrawn. Her
rst reaction is this (18891, where the opening pronoun refers to Demeter):
. . . d r p odn bh pos ka a melqrou
kre krh, plsen d qraj slaoj qeoio.
tn d adj te sbaj te d xlwrn doj elen;
ece d o klismoo ka driasqai nwgen.
The signs of recognition here are unmistakable (B.2.a) and may be compared
with the awe of the perspicacious in the other instances of this pattern.
68
But
here the story takes an odd turn. Instead of acknowledging Metaneiras piety,
Demeter forsakes this story element forever and refuses the throne, opting instead
for a chair presented by the mysterious Iambe. For the hymnist, the gure of
this household servantwhatever her link to cult and ritual humoris important
enough, the force of her role of suYcient narrative power, that her entrance knocks
the theme oV course, and it never recovers the element of acknowledgment. As
often in the Hymns, the poet compels his theme to accommodate a narrative
exigency, here Demeters refusal and withdrawal. Still, he does not suppress, as
we may expect a literate poet to do, all traces of the theme superseded.
This thematic competition, then, is one reason for the disruption of the
logic of the narrative. Another is the poets incorporation into the Hymn of
narratives of foundation. Demeters withdrawal does not mean she is on strike;
68. I am here in disagreement with M. L. Lord, who writes that [t]he epiphany is partial because
[Demeter] is still unrecognized (1994: 187). II.9496 give the impression that the poet planned a
recognition while performing.
far from inactive, she is, like Apollo in the third Hymn, busy with establishing
cults in her honor, which provide a narrative justication for the scenes with
Keleos and his family. But although the goddesss visit occasions a recognition
by Metaneira, this is denied to the daughters and apparently to Keleos himself.
Herein lies an important contrast with the Hymn to Apollo, where the Cretan
mariners are given an unambiguous recognition as a condition of their favored
position in the service of Apollo. Demeters original revelation, upon her entrance
into the palace, on the other hand, is not fully achieved; it is wholly non-verbal (at
18891, her stature and brilliance are divine, but she does not speak, though the
exchange of the greeting xare by Metaneira and the goddess [213, 225] seems to
certify recognition). Furthermore, the expected acknowledgment is interrupted by
the important scene with Iambe, as well as the episode of Demophon. Demeters
tendance of Demophon is diYcult to interpret, given its apparently allusive nature.
The allusion may well be to a cultic background, but that does not determine for
us the public use of the Hymn.
69
On the contrary, a plain description, history,
charter, or other account or justication of a cult (or other religious institution,
doctrine, or belief) seems far from the purpose of this or any of the Homeric
Hymns. Demophons fate is used by the goddess to moralize about human folly
(256V.) and (probably) to allude to a popular aition for the internecine wars
ritually enacted by the Eleusinians (26667).
70
But the cultic components in the
narrative are best seen as ingredients added by the hymnist to establish his own
competence in performing the task at hand.
When revelation comes in the Hymn, it follows the form of other revela-
tions (em d Dhmthr. . . [268V.], B.3.b), but does not betide a reward for the
perspicacious Metaneira: in the Demophon episode, Metaneira has forfeited her
favor.
71
The poet shifts the theme midway to the parallel version, in which the
mortal subjects fail to recognize the god and even abuse him or her. We have
here a narrative doubletnot uncommon in the adjustments that surround the
deployment of traditional material (cf. the triple apparition of Apollo in Hymn
III): Demeter again appears in all her splendor, but now abruptly departs the
house (281); Metaneira is left to collapse in mute terror. The goddesss second
epiphany is handled as if it were the rst and Metaneira were merely the fool who
misunderstood Demeters nurturing of Demophon; and in the end, Metaneira is
never rewarded for her original perspicacity, for defying the truism that xalepo
d qeo qnhtosin rsqai. The poet, pressed by a narrative purpose divergent
from his traditional theme, leaves hanging his original promise (9496), to tell
how Demeter went unrecognized until she came to the palace of Keleos.
69. Clinton 1992: 2837 argues that if the scene is meant to be reminiscent of cult at all it is
likelier to reect the Thesmophoria than the Eleusinian Mysteries. His diligent study still leaves
unresolved the Hymns precise cultic purpose, as indicated by this connection.
70. This is the Ballhtj. Richardson 1974 ad loc.
71. Metaneiras rapid fall from favor is rendered starkly and in sharp contrast to the makarismos
of 480/486 (with 48889 and Richardson 1974 ad locc.).
III. THE THEME OF RECOGNITION I N THE HYMNS
The elements of the narrative pattern as it appears in the major hymns may
now be schematized:
Motif VII Dion. II Dem. III Apollo IV Hermes V Aphrodite
A.1 2 96 391V. 87V., 18788 75V.
A.1.a 3V. 101 [44850] " 8183
A.1.b (4448) 400401
A.1.c 440V.
B.1.a 105V. [402403] [201V.]
B.1.b 8V. [243V.]
B.2 (17879, 18586)
B.2.a 15V. 18891 465 [44547] 8485
B.2.b 213, 225 466 (445) 92
B.2.c 1921 (21315) (465) 9299
B.3.a 55 (45657) 193
B.3.b 5657 268V. 480V. (17879, 19495)
C.1.a 34V. [275V.] 400V. (170V.)
C.1.b 5053 256V.
C.2.a 5355 47579, 482V. 9091
C.2.b 54 (?) " 196V.
[] Indicates a complexity, usually a doublet or disruption of narrative order.
() Indicates supplementary details or partial registry of motif.
The theme thus takes on major signicance and its apprehension is consequently
important for the interpretation (literary or cultural) of the Hymns. It serves not
merely as a conventional building block in hymnic structure (though it may have
attained that function too), but plays a rudimentary religious role. I have suggested
that this role is the symbolic act that fullls the kletic function of the hymn. This
must now be claried.
A salient property of the Hymns, and one of great signicance, is that each
is addressed to a single god (Helios and Selene are treated as such; there are
also Hymns to Heracles and Asclepios), or to closely related groups, such as the
Dioscuri, or Apollo and the Muses; in other words, it is usual that a specic gods
attention is summoned on a specic occasion (we do not yet need to agree on the
occasion). Careful research on the possible cult connections of the longer Hymns,
especially those exhibiting interest in the foundation of cult practices (Hymns II,
III, IV), has tended to reaYrm the panhellenic nature of the Hymns, as opposed to
their local, cultic value.
72
I do not wish to assert that there cannot have been some
72. H. Foley 1994: 17478 (on Hymn II); Clinton 1992 (likewise); Clay 1989: 6V. (general); cf.
Fluckiger-Guggenheim 1984: 85V. Many older works reect the assumption that at least Hymn II
cultic occasion for some one of these Hymns that have come down to us in the
ancient sylloge; only that as we have them, they are probably too little allusive of
local setting to indicate a function in local cult, as attached to a permanent shrine.
73
Be that as it may, we are able to say at a minimum that for some public, ceremonial
purposea festival setting has long seemed attractivea given Homeric Hymn
addressed a single god. But we still need some caution even here: addressed in
what way? It is often noted that the Hymns make very limited use of the Du-Stil
known principally from prayers and cult hymns. Yet, unlike prayers, the Hymns
regularly reserve direct address for the closing lines.
74
This is signicant, for if
I am right that the function of reciting the theme of recognition in some form is to
summon the god into the presence of the hymnist and his audience, then it is only
at the endafter the gods presence has been achievedthat direct address is
possible.
75
All this is further conrmed by the greeting, xare, which is regularly
pronounced in the closing lines. There has been some recent interest in the whole
semantic complex surrounding the key notion behind this imperatival form, that
of xrij.
76
For Race, [i]f there is one dominant concern common to all Greek
hymns, it is surely the notion of xrij, while the second-person imperatival
form xare is much stronger than just hail or farewell, and is part of the
general concern of the hymnist to please the god.
77
Certainly this is part of what
the hymnist sets out to do; the emphasis that Race has placed on this aspect of
the notion is most welcome. But it is doubtful whether limiting the rhetorical
intention of the hymnist to creat[ing] a hymn which will please the god is
suYcient.
78
Races valuable insights on the rhetoric of Greek hymnody should
narrated an aetiological story for the Eleusinian Mysteries; for a recent defense of this view, see
Parker 1991.
73. For deictic reference in cultic hymns, by which is meant internal indices of external
situations, see esp. Depew 2000 with her references.
74. Exceptions: I (where the opening is supplied by editors from a quotation in Diodorus),
VIII (not ancient; see Ca`ssolas introduction to this Hymn [1975: 29799] and Gelzer 1987). I am
deliberately discounting the few cases in which the Muse is asked to tell or sing of the god who
is subject.
75. Frohder 1994: 57 is quite right to take divine presence seriously in the case of cult hymns,
but in the Homeric Hymns she seems to assume that the gods presence is somehow achieved
beforehand: Am Ende seines Preislieds pat sich der Rhapsode erneut dem Stil des Chorhymnus an,
da auch er sich nun der Gottheit personlich zuwendet. Die Gruformel xare, die den Schluteil
fast aller homerischen Hymnen einleitet, zeigt, da nicht nur der Gemeindechor, sondern ebenso
der Rhapsode wahrend des Hymnenvortrags in einem perso nlichen Verhaltnis zur Gottheit zu stehen
glaubt. Von ihr will er jetzt Abschied nehmen und sich dem HeroenstoV der Epen zuwenden. (Note
that Gruformel here means farewell.)
76. The most recent literary studies are MacLachlan 1993 and Scheid-Tissinier 1994. Latacz
1966 produced a comprehensive semantic eld study that remains very useful. The most recent
studies of xrij in the eld of religion are Parker 1998; Yunis 1988; Versnel 1981. Further reV.
below.
77. Race 1982: 8 (emph. in orig.), citing Bundy 1972: 4952. Day 1994 studies the relevance of
this key principle in votive inscriptions.
78. As Race 1982: 14 would have it.
be made to do more work than show how an individual singer establishes this
relationship with a god.
79
Assuming for a moment that cultivating a relationship
of xrij (sensu pleasure) with a god is the aim of the hymnist, we must at least
reintroduce (as far as we can) the songs ceremonial aspect, its public, and say
that the hymn not only does that but is proVered by a specialist on behalf of his
community; the hymnist, then, represents the public before which he performs
his hymn.
80
Indeed, a virtually technical acceptation of xrij has been observed
before: the term can denote a song-oVering that taps the potential energy of
ceremonial reciprocity.
81
But we may go even further by accepting the pragmatic dimension of the word,
common already in Homer, that is activated in moments of welcome.
82
According
to the most recent comparative-linguistic study of the exclamation xare, that of
Rudolf Wachter,
83
the full force of the termxrij should be felt to underlie the form
used for greeting. Judging by some rather striking parallels that Wachter nds in
the Rig Veda, we are safe to posit the syntagma xarein + dative (to rejoice in some
thing) as the basic formulation out of which the imperatival greeting developed.
84
Kurz zusammengefasst du rfte der Ursprung unseres Grusswortes xare somit in
der AuVorderung an den Gastfreund gelegen haben, Geschenkeund d.h. vor-
wiegend Begru ssungs- oder Abschiedsgeschenkefreudig anzunehmen und zu
geniessen. Dabei kam erstens . . . auch Gotter als Gaste in Frage. . . .
85
Wachters
79. Cf. Race 1982: 10: The rhetorical tloj of a hymn is, then, to secure the gods pleasure
by a pleasing choice of names and titles (especially prominent in the Orphic hymns) and by the
proper narration of his powers and exploits (especially prominent in the longer Homeric hymns,
Callimachus hymns, and the prose hymns of Aristides and Menander).
80. This point is made in Day 1994; Calame 1995, 1997; Depew 2000. (On a similar conclusion
in Wachter 1998, see below.) These authors emphasize the nature of votive epigrams and hymns
(Calame alone dwells mainly on the Homeric Hymns) as glmata to the gods they celebrate or
gratify; Bremer 1998b is again relevant; Svenbro 1988 had discussed the poem as sacrice, arguing
that this was its original function. While I do not deny this facet of hymnic composition in many
cases, we should not overgeneralize it for all hymnic practice, since it can lead us to see all hymns as
artifacts (a designation better suited to inscribed epigrams, prayers, hymns, as discussed by Depew
2000). Here I am promoting a view of the Homeric Hymns as symbolic acts rooted in direct religious
practice in an oral setting.
81. See Kurke 1991: 6668 with n.20 for bibliography. Add, in general, MacLachlan 1993;
Parker 1998. Bremer 1998b: 12830 discusses xrij-related terms in expressions of gratitude to
a god. Parkers claim 1998: 109 that the ideas of reciprocity and repayment are associated with
khari- words, but not in any direct semantic way is disproved by his own thorough and balanced
discussions. In general, we need a bold advance beyond rigid denitions of xrij that repose in
notions of joy and pleasure.
82. In discussing the imperative xare, Latacz 1966: 4552 distinguished between a pragnanter
Gebrauch, in which the imperative is accompanied by a dative of that in which one is to feel joy, and
a genereller Gebrauch, which interests us here; he further classi es the situations in which the
imperative is used (47), observing that the term is never hackneyed (abgegri Vene Floskel, 46)
but is always semantically charged.
83. Wachter 1998.
84. Wachter 1998. Wachters study, destined to form part of a larger work, would prot from
a consideration of some of the discussions of xrij that I have just mentioned.
85. 1998: 74.
consideration of these ingredients in Vedic hymns leads him to the Homeric
Hymns. Noting that the greeting is always pronounced before any petition is
addressed to the god, he interprets the use of xare as an invitation to the god
to accept the song as an oVering: In vier dieser Gesange wird zudem explizit
gesagt, dass der Hymnus das Geschenk an die Gottheit sein soll, gleichsam als
Entgelt fu r die Gunst, um die gebeten wird. [. . .] Die Opfergabe . . . ist das schone
Preisgedicht.
86
Wachters study is correct, it seems to me, in identifying the background of
the imperatival xare with the situation surrounding the exchange of gifts at the
coming and going of visitors.
87
But when, observing that it often occurs at the
end of the Hymn, immediately preceding the petition, he concludes that [s]omit
passt weder die Begru ssungs- noch die Abschiedsfunktion,
88
we have reason to
dissent. For Wachter, the salutations connection to the broader range of meaning
surrounding xrij and exchanges of social encounter is evidently limited to the
apprehension of the song as Opfergabe.
According to Wachter, then, the spirit of xare + dative lurks in the closing
lines of the Hymns. This is certainly possible. But in fact this syntagma itself
appears only in a single repeated line in the Hymns (IX.7 = XIV.6; never in the
longer ones), and two other expressions that are thought to do the work of xare
+ dative may be interpreted in a way more consonant with the pragmatic view
for which I am arguing. These are the phrase ka s mn otw xare (I.20,
III.545, IV.579, IX.7, etc.) and the syntagma lamai + dative. Race and Wachter
advocate taking the rst as equivalent to xare +dative (rejoice thus = rejoice in
this);
89
Race adduces the second parallel.
90
If we accept these equations, it would
strengthen Wachters case that xare marks the song as a gift. But diYculties
remain.
First, the repeated line ka s mn otw xare, qea q ma psai oidi
(IX.7 = XIV.6), the only use of xare + dative in the Hymns, presents an
unexpected pitfall for this aspect of Wachters thesis. Owing to the evidence
that the Hymns served as prooimia to further song performance, oidi cannot
be understood to refer unambiguously to the Hymn itself; the xrij oVering
could be the oid that is to follow, as is more clearly the case in a parallel
line: xare qe ka tnde sw plin; rxe d oidj (XIII.3), etc. A Hymn is
not the oid, despite lines such as atr gn mwn te ka llhj mnsom
86. 1998: 72; of the four he cites, only two, which I discuss below, actually make this oVering
with xare + dative. The other two are II.49094 (esp. 494) and XXX.1718, where the petition
is oVered nt idj. See below for the diYculty of interpreting this phrase. (For song as gift in
reciprocal exchange, cf. Day 1994, Calame 1997.)
87. On xare and conventions of xenia, see his discussion at 1998: 7374.
88. Loc. cit.
89. Race 1982: 9 (not cited by Wachter) translates take pleasure in the song; and Wachter, loc.
cit., translates und du mo gest Gefallen nden daran (scil. an diesem Gedicht).
90. Loc. cit.
oidj, which is often understood to refer to another oid and hence identify
the Hymn itself as one too. Against this, there is plentiful evidence that supports
the interpretation of llhj . . . oidj as something else, namely an oidand
not necessarily as another oid.
91
The latter translation is possible, but the
former, normal Greek of the period, harmonizes better with an apprehension of
the Hymns as prooimia. Koller suggests another possibility. metabanein llon j
mnon, he argues, should be taken to mean u bergehen zum folgenden Hauptteil,
des Gesanges, des Hymnos. Hymnos ist also die Bezeichnung fu r das Ganze,
das Prooimion und das (nicht u berlieferte) Hauptstu ck,
92
and the same would go
for oid mutatis mutandis. We encounter a similar diYculty with the line ka
s mn otw xare, nac, lamai d s oidi (XIX.48), if the text as the editors
print it is right:
93
here again this could refer to the song that follows.
Another diYculty for the argument that xare simply marks its own Hymn as
a gift is that even the smallest Hymns, some of only a few lines, pronounce xare
to the god (XIII was quoted above, a three-liner). It seems far likelier that the
hymnist considered his xrij-oVering (if we are right in thinking of the hymn
as partly that) to be the om itself, not strictly the proomion. We must accept
the real possibility that if an oVering is in question, it is the oid that follows
the performance of the Hymn (proomion) that the singer conceives as the oVering
of xrij to which he has alluded in the closing line of the preceding Hymn. But
this is very far from denying William Races excellent observation that the notion
of xrij is fundamental to the Hymns, especially the long ones, in which the
singer may be seen as building up, playfully and exuberantly, to the nal cry,
hastening past his petition and onward to the great song beyond. This would be so
even if the song-oVering is the om.
Is there actually a diYculty in the fact that many of the shorter Hymns also
pronounce the xare, despite the absence of an epica pars (and hence historiola
with recognition theme)? The many problems surrounding these works may
prevent us from understanding the signicance of this fact. The brief Hymns
have been variously seen as extracts, summaries, mnemonics, and so oneven as
the only true prooimia.
94
Nothing compels us to believe that all the Hymns had
identical origins and functions; but on balance, there is room to wonder why these
particular texts, some of them very unremarkable, were collected at allunless
they were evocative of something larger. Ca`ssola makes this point by comparing
Hymns XVIII and IV, both devoted to Hermes.
95
They show considerable overlap
91. LSJ
9
s.v. lloj, II.8.
92. 1956: 177. He argues that such lines, taken out of context, gave rise much later to the
specialization of the term hymnos for prooimion.
93. lamai is accepted by Gemoll, Allen, and Ca`ssola from a marginal addition to P; the scholar
responsible for it may have known similar usage in other hymns. Other manuscripts have metrical
aws here, mainly in a form of lssomai (Barnes suggested ltomai, for which cf. XVI.5).
94. See the discussions of Ca`ssola 1975: xvii-xxii; Allen, Halliday, and Sikes 1936: xciii-xcv.
95. 1975: xviii-xix.
in wording, so that the former seems to be susceptible of expansion into the latter;
or the longer of being collapsed into the shorter. I see no need, then, to explain
the xare of the shorter hymns as functionally diVerent from that of the longer
hymns: it is still a greeting. I would observe, though, that if the shorter Hymns
were performed as they appear to us, an expression like ka s mn otw xare in
them could well pass in sense from so greetings to you, then . . . (as it would
be taken, for example, at III.545) to greetings to you even thus (sc. lacking a
story).
96
But it is even likelier that we see in the xare of the shorter Hymns
the full evocative force of the formulaic expression it is, with its ability to suggest
in its very public pronunciation the fulllment of a larger traditional context that
lies unexpressed, but immanent all the same, in these Hymns.
97
The way is clear, then, for us to interpret the exclamation xare as the singers
welcome of the arriving god. This should not be diYcult to accept, owing to
the consistent use of xrij-based words at moments of contactor hoped-for
contactwith a god. We have already seen how xare is attested as a greeting
within the narratives of the Hymns. Moreover, it may be said generally that
discussions of xrij in the Homeric Hymns have suVered froma decit in attention
to the visual aspects of this complex concept. We would not be far wrong in saying
that xrij is the presencein woman, man, song, artof something divine, its
manifestation being often visual. Bonnie MacLachlan has made the intriguing
suggestion that the xrij shed by a god over the skin of a mortal, almost as an
unguent, acts to clarify the sight of those who look on and awaken their awareness
of the supernatural qualities in the subject. Odysseus charis-unction in Book
8 [of the Odyssey] has as its intent the transformation of the hero froma dangerous
outsider to a friend among the Phaeacians. . . . With charis Athene removes the
natural barriers that separate people who are unknown to each other, who might be
experienced as a threat.
98
We may add to this an observation by Richard Seaford,
that given the constant association of kharis (delight, favour) and its cognates
with reciprocity, and their frequent application to sacricial oVerings, it may not
be a coincidence that in Euripides Bakkhai (13940) the presence of the god
among his worshippers is mentioned in the same breath as the raw-eating kharis
involved in the killing of a goat.
99
If xare in the Hymns is a welcome, it is
equally a cry of success. Having sung his prooimion with grace (one aspect of
xrij) and with all the charged meaning of a ritual exchange of gifts (another);
having lured the god, if the situation and the singers talent allowed, by a fuller
enumeration of godly attributes, epithets, deeds; and having included among these
96. Here I follow Koller in taking otw in this formula to refer to the manner of the prooimions
presentation: Der Gott soll sich mit dem kurzen Anruf und der Geburtsgeschichte zufrieden geben
. . . (1956: 175); though it does not necessarily refer to brevity (in addition to the passage from
III, see IV.579).
97. On this power of traditional oral art, see J. M. Foley 1991 esp. 637 with bibliography.
98. MacLachlan 1993: 14748, cf. 31V.
99. Seaford 1998: 10.
a story of how the god came among mortals and of what consequences there were
if that god were recognized or nothaving excelled at this, the poet might display
his skill to the crowd of celebrants by greeting him, in the hope that the coming
god might revel in the song proVered, as his worshippers do also.
University of Iowa
jf-garcia@uiowa.edu
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Symbolic Action in the Homeric Hymns: The Theme of Recognition

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tudes de Litterature Ancienne 3, 1327. Paris.

ber religio se Wurzeln des Epischen. In H. Hartmann and H. Neu-

tudes Anciennes 11. Nancy.

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