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The Homeric Hymns

Name: The Homeric Hymns
Author: Homer
ISBN: 9781313493857

by Homer

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Overview

A rich source for students of Greek mythology and literature, the Homeric Hymns are also fine poetry. Attributed by the ancients to Homer, these prooimia, or preludes, were actually composed over centuries and used by poets to prepare for the singing or recitation of longer passages of the Homeric epics. In his acclaimed translations of the Hymns, Apostolos N. Athanassakis preserves the essential simplicity of the original Greek, offering a straightforward, line-by-line translation without seeking to masquerade or modernize. For this long-awaited new edition, Athanassakis enhances his classic work with a new bibliography, a comprehensive index, careful and selective changes in the translations themselves, and numerous additions to the introduction and notes which will enrich the reader's experience of these ancient and influential poems.

About the Author, Homer

Apostolos N. Athanassakis holds the James and Sarah Argyropoulos Chair in Hellenic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Among his many translations is Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Shield, also available from Johns Hopkins.

Biography

We know very little about the author of The Odyssey and its companion tale, The Iliad. Most scholars agree that Homer was Greek; those who try to identify his origin on the basis of dialect forms in the poems tend to choose as his homeland either Smyrna, now the Turkish city known as Izmir, or Chios, an island in the eastern Aegean Sea.

According to legend, Homer was blind, though scholarly evidence can neither confirm nor contradict the point.

The ongoing debate about who Homer was, when he lived, and even if he wrote The Odyssey and The Iliad is known as the "Homeric question." Classicists do agree that these tales of the fall of the city of Troy (Ilium) in the Trojan War (The Iliad) and the aftermath of that ten-year battle (The Odyssey) coincide with the ending of the Mycenaean period around 1200 BCE (a date that corresponds with the end of the Bronze Age throughout the Eastern Mediterranean). The Mycenaeans were a society of warriors and traders; beginning around 1600 BCE, they became a major power in the Mediterranean. Brilliant potters and architects, they also developed a system of writing known as Linear B, based on a syllabary, writing in which each symbol stands for a syllable.

Scholars disagree on when Homer lived or when he might have written The Odyssey. Some have placed Homer in the late-Mycenaean period, which means he would have written about the Trojan War as recent history. Close study of the texts, however, reveals aspects of political, material, religious, and military life of the Bronze Age and of the so-called Dark Age, as the period of domination by the less-advanced Dorian invaders who usurped the Mycenaeans is known. But how, other scholars argue, could Homer have created works of such magnitude in the Dark Age, when there was no system of writing? Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, placed Homer sometime around the ninth century BCE, at the beginning of the Archaic period, in which the Greeks adopted a system of writing from the Phoenicians and widely colonized the Mediterranean. And modern scholarship shows that the most recent details in the poems are datable to the period between 750 and 700 BCE.

No one, however, disputes the fact that The Odyssey (and The Iliad as well) arose from oral tradition. Stock phrases, types of episodes, and repeated phrases -- such as "early, rose-fingered dawn" -- bear the mark of epic storytelling. Scholars agree, too, that this tale of the Greek hero Odysseus's journey and adventures as he returned home from Troy to Ithaca is a work of the greatest historical significance and, indeed, one of the foundations of Western literature.

Author biography from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of The Odyssey.

Good To Know

The meter (rhythmic pattern of syllables) of Homer's epic poems is dactylic hexameter.

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Editorials

Parnassus: Poetry in Review

More than any other translation, this one makes these ancient poems seem familiar without eroding our sense of them as profoundly archaic and foreign.

Queen's Quarterly

Professor Athanassakis' new translation of the Hymns is very welcome. It is clearly intended for the use of students in courses in Greek mythology and religion, and includes a short but useful general introduction and separate notes to each Hymn... Athanassakis' translation is acceptable, and his commentary is very useful for its sound traditional scholarship and acquaintance with modern Greek folklore which he alone can contribute.

— Mark W. Edwards

Classical Outlook

The translations present clear, smooth, and occasionally stately narrative. The translator displays a knack for selecting colorful and appropriate English words to match the Greek.

Parnassus: Poetry in Review

More than any other translation, this one makes these ancient poems seem familiar without eroding our sense of them as profoundly archaic and foreign.