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The Dictaean Hymn to the Kouros

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

M. L. West
M. L. West*
Affiliation:
University College, Oxford
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Extract

K. Latte, De saltationibus Graecorum 44, notes the possibility that κορε was originally written, representing κῶρε. There are instances in the hymn of ε and ο representing secondary ε̄ and ο̄ (cf. on 5, 30, 38, 50), though we also find κατῆχε in 38. This orthography must go back to the original written text, and helps to date the composition, being found in a few Cretan inscriptions of the third century B.C. but not later (Bechtel, Gr. Dial, ii 680 ff.). Before the fourth century, η and ω were not used at all in Crete, so that if the hymn were as early as the fifth century, as Wilamowitz asserts (Griech. Verskunst 502) without giving his reasons, we should expect either ε and ο throughout or a uniform transliteration, not the distinction that is actually apparent between η, ω for original η, ω (also for η < αε and εα, ω < εο) and ε, ο for the contraction of εε, οο, and for ε, ο lengthened by compensation. The usual dating of the hymn to the fourth or third century thus receives confirmation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 85 , November 1965 , pp. 149 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1965

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References

1 The history of its transmission is probably simple. The poet will have written it on a wax tablet or a piece of papyrus, from which it was copied on stone, like the Paeans of Isyllus, Macedonius, Limenius, Aristonous and others ( Powell, , Collectanea Alexandrina 132–71Google Scholar), and the (hexameter?) hymn to the Idaean Dactyls (ibid., 171–3). The practice of inscribing such hymns seems to have been common from the fourth century on. The Palaikastro inscription we have, which is dated to the third century A.D., will have been designed to replace the original inscription. It may not have been copied direct from stone to stone, but by way of an intermediate pen- or stylus-written copy. Then it was apparently sketched out on the stone in some way, and the engraver slavishly followed the partly cursive lines of this sketch without understanding. See Bosanquet, , BSA xv (1908/1909) 346–8.Google Scholar

2 Latte, 45 n. 1, takes it as an unexampled symbol for the nasal gamma.

3 The relative clause often refers to the place where the god is or may be. See Norden, , Agnostos Theos 168 ff.Google Scholar

4 The form ΗΤΟΣ for ἔτος on an Aetolian inscription, IG 92 (1) 2. II, 31, 32, is probably to be interpreted as hέτος: so Buck, , Greek Dialects 19 and 54.Google Scholar

5 Unless one assumes indentation of the first word of the stanza, which is not found in the other places where this falls at the beginning of the line (7 front and back).

6 Against Murray's supplement ἂμφεπε ζῷ' is the fact that π is preceded by the top of a vertical. There is no other instance in the poem of elision between lines; this is also an objection to Wilamowitz's δι]ῆπε ζώ<ϊ'>, though it must in fairness be admitted that there is no instance of hiatus between lines either. The short vowel before ζ cannot be called impossible: there is an apparent example as early as Timotheus, , Persae 189 f.Google Scholar, where should be taken as a dactylic sequence. Homeric etc. is a special case.

7 Denniston, , Greek Particles 16 Google Scholar, gives some parallels.

8 ‘Freilich redet man sonst von βοῶν ἀγέλαι.’ (p. 500.)

9 Et. magn. 276.19 s.v. Compare coins from Phaistos (s. v–iv; Head, , Hist. Num. 2 473 Google Scholar) showing a boy labelled FΕΛXAΝΟC sitting in the branches of a tree, with Hesych. (κρισιω cod.). Welchanos, who is known to have been worshipped in classical times at Knossos, Lyttos and Gortyn, in other words in the areas round Mt. Ida and Mt. Lasithi, may have been the original ‘Minoan’ name of the Cretan Zeus. His festival the Welchania fell in the spring, cf. Inscr. Cret. I. xvi 3.2 (Knossos), I. xviii 11.2 (Lyttos); Cook, A. B., Zeus ii 948.Google Scholar It is possible that he is identical with the Etruscan Velχans (but hardly with Latin Volcanus); see Meid, W., Indog. Forsch. lxvi (1961) 259–66.Google Scholar

10 Ant. Lib. 19 (from the Ornithogony of ‘Boios’) . The ‘blood’ that ‘bubbled up’ was perhaps the sap that returns to vegetation in the springtime; while the fire that blazed forth from the cave I imagine to have been annually contrived by priests as a sign to the worshippers that the god was born again.

11 Cf. Homeric κούρητες Ἀχαιῶν = κχῦροι ῦχαιῶν.

12 The Qōrēs of the very early inscriptions on Thera (IG xii.3 354, 355, 371) is perhaps to be identified with him. Thera had particular connexions with Crete from the Bronze Age on. From Thera the cult was carried to Cyrene, from where we have dedications to the Κωρής in the fourth-third century, one of them, significantly, to the ‘Koures of Crete’ (SEG ix 108 Κωρὴς Κρήτης).

13 Mel. adesp. 67 (b) 7 δενδροφυεῖς ἀναβλαστνοντάας.

14 Cf. the Euhemeristic account of them in Diod. v 65 .

15 Orph. Hymn. xxxviii 13.

16 Ibid., 14.

17 Ibid., 25.

18 GDI iv p. 1036 (from Hagia Varvara, below Ida)

19 Od. vi 122, Pind. P. iii 78, Eur. HF 785, Rhes. 929, Call. Hymn. iii 66, Ap. Rhod. iv 1349, Theodoridas Anth. Pal. vi 156, Orph. Hymn. 51.13, Nonn. D. ix 315, xxxvii 21; conjectured also in Hes. Th. 346, cf. CQ. N.S. xi (1961) 137.

20 Cypria fr. 5 Allen, Hom. Hymn. xix 19 ff., Ap. Rhod. i 1221 ff., etc.

21 E.g. sch. Dan. Virg. Ecl. x 62 sane ab ouibus nymphae perimelides … ab alimonia infantum curotrophae nominantur, Ant. Lib. 31.3 Hes. Th. 347, sch. Il. xx 8, sch. Ap. Rhod. iv 1322, Paus, viii 4.2; Orph. Hymn. 51.12–13

22 [Hes.] fr. 198 Rz. .

23 GDI 5041 .

24 Hymn. Dem. 5 ff., 417 ff.; cf. Orph. fr. 49.19 ff., Colum. 10.268 ff., Stat. Ach. i 824 ff., Paus, v 20.3. Persephone was reared in a cave in the company of nymphs, according to Porph. de antro Nympharum 7.

25 Nilsson, 's contention that it is in the summer months that she disappears (Arch. f. Rel. xxxii (1935) 105 ff.Google Scholar = Opuscula Selecta ii 576 ff) goes against the explicit statement in Hymn. Dem. 401 (cf. 455), as well as the passages from late writers quoted by Nilsson, himself, Op. Sel. ii 578 n. 96.Google Scholar

26 The references are collected by Cook, A. B., Zeus ii 940–43Google Scholar with iii 1173. In Alcidamas' Mouseion (Pap. Flinders Petrie i 25, cf. Certamen line 100 Allen) the tomb of Zeus appears as something in the same class of unreality as ‘the King of France’. Hesiod proposes a puzzle as follows:

—a programme that Homer fulfils by declaring

So again in Certamen 121–3:

(puzzle) (solution and counter-puzzle)

(solution)

In Call. Hymn. i 8–9 the death is inferred from the tomb:

27 ἐνιαντός probably does not mean ‘year’ here, but the day that marks the end of a year, as often. So Latte, 47 n. 3. Differently in Arat. 34

28 Hymn. Aphr. 264 ff. with the note of Allen—Sikes—Halliday.

29 Call. Hymn, iv 84–5

30 Armed dancing for this purpose is attested. Cf. Frazer, , Golden Bough (2nd ed., 1900) iii 123 n. 3.Google Scholar

31 Epimenides, the wonder-worker and priest of Zeus and the Nymphs (cf. Theopomp. 115 F 69), was called Κουρής and said to be the son of a nymph Balte or Blaste (Plut. Sol. 12.4; Myronianus, FHG iv 454 Google Scholar, fr. 1).

32 Hyg. Fab. 139.3 Iuno autem Iouem in Cretensi insula detulit. at Amalthea pueri nutrix eum in cunis in arbore suspendit, ut neque caelo neque terra neque mari inueniretur, et ne pueri uagitus exaudiretur. impuberes conuocauit, eisque clipeola aenea et hastas dedit, et iussit eos circum arborem euntes crepare; qui Graece Curetes sunt appellati. Compare the representations of Welchanos in the branches of a tree, on the coins mentioned above.

33 See Nilsson, , Minoan-Mycenaean Religion 2 262 ff.Google Scholar

34 Nilsson, 280, fig. 140. I am warned that the ring may be a forgery: cf. Biesantz, , Kretisch-Mykenische Siegelbilder, 1954, 120 f.Google Scholar

35 Or the singers themselves may have begun to dance in the later part of the hymn. So Jeanmaire, H., Couroi et Comètes (1939) 432 f.Google Scholar

36 Wilamowitz, 501. According to Nonnus, D. iii 61 ff., it is at dawn that the Korybantes, who for him are identical with the Kouretes, begin their dancing:

(77)

Bosanquet, 354 f., suggests that there may be a reference to a time when the regular order of night and day had not yet been fixed, or not yet understood by man; this seems less appropriate to the context.

37 For the association of Dike and Eirene cf. Hes. Th. 902 (where they are both Horai), Op. 225 ff. β]ρνύν κατῆτς would fit better if κατῆτς could mean ‘throughout the year’; cf. Ov. Met. i 107, 116–19, for eternal spring as a feature of the Golden Age. But κατ' ἒτος regularly means ‘annually’ (e.g. Thuc. iv 53, Diod. iii 2, Ev. Luc. ii 41), or else ‘this year’ (SIG 3 284.24, OGI 458.64, CIG 3641 b 5, 38). If we adopt the sense ‘every year’, the idea might be that the crops (καρποί) never failed.

38 Hom. Hymn. xxx; in the opposite sense, Hes. Op. 225–47, Od. xix 109–14.

39 Hes. Th. 969 ff., etc. The Child of the union was Ploutos, cereal wealth. Iasion was a farmer, according to Canter's certain correction in Nonn. D. xlviii 677. For the type of ritual cf. Frazer, , Golden Bough (3rd ed.) ii 97–104 Google Scholar and xiii (‘Aftermath’, 1936) 153–6.

40 Verse 57. This sense of πόλις is normal in Crete.

41 Soph. OC 1606. For Zeus Chthonios as a god of thunder cf. Nonn. D. xxvii 93.

42 Op. 465 ff.; cf. SIG 3 1024.20 (Mykonos).

43 Perhaps it was originally this Zeus who was the consort of Demeter and father of Kore.

44 Il. ix 456 f. Compare the belief that sitting on a tomb at certain times may make a man impotent: Hes. Op. 750–2 (if that is what the lines mean). For the Erinyes in connexion with Zeus Chthonios and Persephone cf. Orph. Hymn. lxx 2, Nonn. D. xliv 258.

45 The Cretan year-god might himself have been lord of the dead among his other functions; the case of Osiris shows that the two things may go together.

I am indebted to Professor Hugh Lloyd-Jones and Mr John Boardman for comments and corrections to this article.