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Cynaethus' Hymn To Apollo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. L. West
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Extract

It is generally accepted that the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was not conceived as a single poem but is a combination of two: a Delian hymn, D, performed at Delos and concerned with the god's birth there, and a Pythian hymn, P, concerned with his arrival and establishment at Delphi. What above all compels us to make a dichotomy is not the change of scene in itself, but the way D ends. The poet returns from the past to the present, and takes leave of his audience; farewell, he says, and remember me ever after. He is quite clearly finishing. Whereupon there is an abrupt and unsatisfactory transition to P.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , December 1975 , pp. 161 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1975

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References

page 161 note 1 De Homerische Apollohymnus, Diss. Leiden, 1940.

page 161 note 2 IEP Aσ, Studies presented to George Thomson (Prague, 1963), 99–109.

page 161 note 3 I base the figures on the material collected in the edition of Allen and Sikes, pp. lxv f., not counting initial, and not counting neglects which are doubtful because of movable nu, etc. In the Hymn to Demeter the corresponding ratios (up to/after line 180) are P4:I.0.:I.4:I, o.8:I; in the Hymn to Hermes I.o:I, I.8:1. The fluctuations are quite large because of the shortness of the texts being compared. The differences are not so great, however, as between D and P. Allen and Sikes gave separate figures for D and P, and noted the difference; but in his later edition with the more docile Halliday, Allen suppressed the fact in furtherance of his unitarian opinions. 57 249 = 289 = 366; 75 f. 220 f., 244 f.; 80 f. 247 f., 258 f., 287 f.

page 162 note 1 1 57 ~ 249 ═ 289 ═ 366; 75 f. ~ 220 f., 244 f.; 80 f. ~ 247 f., 258 f., 287 f.

page 162 note 2 Wilamowitz, Die Ilias and Homer, 441, and Pindaros, 74 1111. 2–3; Jacoby, S.P.A.W. 1933, 715 ff. = Kl. phil. Schr. 179 ff.; H. T. Wade-Gery in Greek Poetry and Life (Essays presented to Gilbert Murray, 1936), 56 = his Essays in Greek History, 17; J. Humbert, Homire, Hymnes (Bude, 1937), 67–72; B. A. van Groningen, La Composition littlraire archaique grecque, 318–23;Lesky, A., R.E. Suppl. xi. 827.18 (=141. 18 of the Separat, Homeros). Jacoby and van Groningen believe that P was meant to follow on 138 or 139, replacing the personal ending of D. One earlier scholar took D as the imitation of P: A. Fick, Bezz. Beitr. xvi (1890), 21.Google Scholar

page 162 note 3 Cf. Altheim, F., Hermes lix (1924), 442.Google Scholar

page 162 note 4 As Hermann said, p. xxvii of his edition: ’is hynmus initio caret.’ Cf. Deubner, L., S.P.A.W. 1938, pp. 256 f.Google Scholar

page 163 note 1 Hymn 6. 14–18, 19. 42–7; Hes. Th. 68 ff., 201–2.

page 164 note 1 Hermann suggested that a line had fallen out after 29, with the sense ‘Latona, Apollinem paritura, adiit…’. But she was looking for a place, not a people, and 30 ff.is a list of peoples: The cannot be separated from the of 29. ee the note of Allen and Halliday. Wilamowitz's assertion, ‘Nur in alter Zeit konnte von einem delischen Orakel geredet werden’ (II. u. H., 446 n. 2), is at variance with the evidence.

page 165 note 1 See the note of Allen and Halliday Wilamowitz's assertion, ‘Nur in alter Zeit konnte von einem delischen Orakel geredet werden’ (Il. u. H., 446 n. 2), is at variance with the evidence.

page 165 note 2 Lines 270-I, where Crisa is said to be untroubled by the noise of horses and chariots, are usually assumed to antedate the introduction of chariot-racing at the Pythian Games in 586. The contrast is primarily between temple-sites on and ofl a main road, but it would certainly be odd to represent the noise of chariots as being offensive to Apollo at a time when they competed at his games. Lines 540–3, with their threat that the Cretan priesthood will pass into the control of others if they do not conduct themselves properly, are naturally connected with the First Sacred War, but read to me less like a post-eventum prophecy than a warning in time of imminent danger. Crisa, which was destroyed in the war, is represented as a flourishing inhabited place (446). No inference as to date can be drawn from 294–9, for the temple is not said to be going to stand for ever, but to be famous for ever.

page 165 note 3 174 f.

page 165 note 4 As do Paus. 10. 37. 5, Ath. 22b, St. Byz. s.v.

page 166 note 1 Pl. Rep. 599 e, Isoc. 10. 65.

page 166 note 2 Pl. Ion 530 d.

page 166 note 3 334 b, 682 e. I am not forgetting that 22 b and 25 c are only preserved in the epitome, so that it is conceivable that names have been eliminated; only it is not in the epitomator's manner to pass over the names of authorities.

page 166 note 4 3. 104; perhaps also by Aristophanes, if Birds 575 is a reference to Hymn. Ap. 114.

page 166 note 5 There is nothing to show whether Thucydides knows it as an independent poem or joined with P. Cf. Allen-Halliday, 186 f., where however the argument that 'as Gemoll observes, if he had been acquainted with more than one hymn to Apollo he would hardly have written is useless, because he did not write that. The definite article is not in the text.

page 166 note 6 Cf. C.Q.N.s. xxi (1971), 305 f.Google Scholar

page 167 note 1 On their historicity see Merkelbach, R., Untersuchungen zur Odyssee, pp. 139–41.Google Scholar

page 167 note 2 Ch. 9. Contrast Vita Scorialensis p. 29. 59 Wil. = Allen's Vita V, line 19, Pseudo-Plutarch and Proclus also restrict his work to the Iliadand Odyssey.

page 167 note 3 Cert. 18, I. 316. See Bethe, E., Ber. säcks. Gesellsch., Phil.-hist. KI., lxxxiii (2) (1931), 3–7.Google Scholar

page 167 note 4 Pausanias, Athenaeus: above p. 165 n. 4.

page 167 note 5 Cf. Jacoby, Kl. phil. Schr. 183 n. 100, who compares Eur. H.F. 674 van Groningen, La Comp., 313–16.

page 167 note 6 Op. cit. 201 f.

page 167 note 7 Deubner, S.P.A.W.1938, 257 f.Google Scholar

page 168 note 1 Humbert, ed., 72; van Groningen, 311 f. Deubner, 263, follows Jacoby.

page 168 note 2 Cf. Wilamowitz, u. H., 450 n. I.

page 168 note 3 A remarkable feature of the hymn collection as a whole is the presence in it of obvious doublets: I. 13–15/16, 17–19/20-I; 3. 96/98–101 (see below), 136–8/139; 5. 62/63, 97/98–9, 136/136a; 18. 10–11/12. But the alternatives are simply juxtaposed; the procedure is different from what has been done with D and P, and not to be attributed to the same agent.

page 169 note 1 Wilamowitz, 447 n. 3; Jacoby, 170 f.

page 169 note 2 Jacoby notices 110 f. in this connection, but draws the odd conclusion that 96 was invented to suit 110, while the original version contradicted it.