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The performance of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite

Andrew Faulkner

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Faulkner Andrew. The performance of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. In: Hymnes de la Grèce antique : approches
littéraires et historiques. Actes du colloque international de Lyon, 19-21 juin 2008. Lyon : Maison de l'Orient et de la
Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, 2013. pp. 171-176. (Collection de la Maison de l'Orient méditerranéen ancien. Série
littéraire et philosophique, 50);

https://www.persee.fr/doc/mom_0151-7015_2013_act_50_1_3338

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 The Performance of the Homeric Hymn
to Aphrodite

Andrew Faulkner
University of Waterloo, Canada

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite contains no direct mention of or allusion to loca­

lized cult practice. This absence is striking given that aetiology of cult practice is
a feature of the other three long narrative poems fully extant in the collection, to
Demeter, Apollo, and Hermes. In the Hymn to Demeter, the goddess goes to Eleusis
and establishes the Eleusinian mysteries. The Hymn to Apollo narrates Apollo’s birth
and the foundation of his cults on Delos and Delphi. The Hymn to Hermes does not
give consideration to cult on the same scale as the Hymns to Apollo and Demeter, but
there does appear to be some allusion to the origin of cult practice in the description
of the killing of Apollo’s cattle (l. 127-129):
Ἑρμῆς χαρμόφρων εἰρύσσατο πίονα ἔργα
λείῳ ἐπὶ πλαταμῶνι, καὶ ἔσχισε δώδεκα μοίρας
κληροπαλεῖς˙ τέλεον δὲ γέρας προσέθηκεν ἑκάστῃ
Then Hermes happily drew off the rich cooking from the spits
onto a smooth slab, and split it into twelve portions determined by
lot, and assigned a fixed rank to each one.1

Upon sacrificing Apollo’s cattle next to the river Alpheios, Hermes divides the
meat up into twelve portions, what seems to be an allusion to the cult of the twelve
gods at Olympia, where Hermes was himself worshipped together with Apollo.2 The
first Hymn to Dionysus has survived only in a few fragments, but the story it told, the
libe­ration of Hera from the bonds of Hephaestus by Dionysus and his acceptance into

1. Trans. West (ed.) 2003.

2. See Burkert 2001, p. 178-188; Johnston 2002, p. 124-126, and West (ed.) 2003, p. 13-14.
Larson 1995 argues that the poem contains an aetiology for the cult of the bee maidens at
Delphi. For a discussion of different types of interpretation, see in this volume Thomas, p. 184-
189.

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 172 a. faulkner

Olympus, has been connected to the Samian Tonaia, a ritual in which a cult image of
Hera was bound and taken to the shore,3 and the hymn seems to have made specific
reference to the establishment of Dionysus cult on at least one occasion.4

In contrast, there is no aetiology of cult or ritual worship in the Hymn to Aphrodite.

The poem opens with praise of Aphrodite’s universal power, then goes on to tell of
how Zeus made Aphrodite fall in love with Anchises, seduce him, and subsequently
give birth to Aeneas through the union. It had been suggested prior to the twentieth
cen­tury that the Hymn to Aphrodite was composed in Cyprus for performance at
a festival in honour of Aphrodite, a claim based upon the hymn’s use of the title
Κύπρις (l. 2), the mention of Aphrodite’s retirement to Cyprus at the end of the poem
(l. 192), and the supposition that the rare term σατίνη (l. 13) was Cypriote, but it has
now long been recognized that the poem has no special relationship with Cyprus: the
description of Aphrodite’s toilette at Paphos (l. 58-63), her connection to Cyprus,
and the title Κύπρις are all epic material known in Homer, which demonstrate no
particular knowledge of Aphrodite cult on Cyprus, while σατίνη is not Cypriote but
an Aeolic loan word that points to composition of the poem somewhere in the Troad.5
One might contrast the sixth Hymn to Aphrodite, in which much is made of the island
of Cyprus in the first lines of the poem and there is at the end (l. 19-20) a direct refe­
rence to competing in a public singing competition:
χαῖρ’ ἑλικοβλέφαρε, γλυκυμείλιχε, δὸς δ’ ἐν ἀγῶνι
νίκην τῷδε φέρεσθαι, ἐμὴν δ’ ἔντυνον ἀοιδήν.
I salute you, sweet-and-gentle one of curling lashes:
grant me victory in this competition, and order my singing.

This short hymn may well have been composed for performance at a Cypriote
festival.6
The only mention of the foundation of cult honours in the Hymn to Aphrodite comes
in lines 100-106, when Anchises promises the as yet unidentified young woman on
his mountain (Aphrodite in disguise), whom he assumes is a goddess, the foundation
of an altar and yearly sacrifices in return for a long life and healthy offspring:
σοὶ δ’ ἐγὼ ἐν σκοπιῇ, περιφαινομένῳ ἐνὶ χώρῳ, 100
βωμὸν ποιήσω, ῥέξω δέ τοι ἱερὰ καλά
ὥρῃσιν πάσῃσι· σὺ δ’ εὔφρονα θυμὸν ἔχουσα

3. See West 2001, p. 3-4, on the connection originally made by Wilamowitz.

4. See HH 1, frg. D, 1-3 West καί οἱ ἀναστήσουσιν ἀγάλματα πόλλ’ ἐνὶ νηοῖς. / Ὡς δὲ †τὰ
μὲν τριάσοι πάντως† τριετηρίσιν αἰεί  / ἄνθρωποι ῥέξουσι τεληέσσας ἑκατόμβας,
which explain the establishment of Dionysiac trieteric festivals.
5. The weakness of the connection to Cyprus was pointed out by Allen, Sikes (eds) 1904, p. 198,
and appeals to Cypriote provenance have since been sensibly abandoned. See Faulkner (ed.)
2008a, p. 49-50 and ad loc., with further bibliography.
6. See West 1992, p. 19, n. 25, who suggests the panegyris at Old Paphos as a possibility.

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 the performance of the homeric hymn to aphrodite 173

δός με μετὰ Τρώεσσιν ἀριπρεπέ’ ἔμμεναι ἄνδρα,

ποίει δ’ εἰσοπίσω θαλερὸν γόνον, αὐτὰρ ἔμ’ αὐτόν
δηρὸν ἔϋ ζώειν καὶ ὁρᾶν φάος ἠελίοιο 105
ὄλβιον ἐν λαοῖς καὶ γήραος οὐδὸν ἱκέσθαι.
I will build you an altar on a hilltop, in a conspicuous place,
and make goodly sacrifices to you at every due season. Only
have a kindly heart, and grant that I may be a man outstanding
among the Trojans, and make my future offspring healthy, and
myself to live long and well, seeing the light of the sun and
enjoying good fortune among the peoples, and to reach the doorstep of old age.

It has been proposed that these lines describe the foundation of an actual cult to
Aphrodite on Mount Ida,7 but there is little reason to read anything so concrete in the
passage. The instructions given by gods and goddesses for the foundation of a cult site
in the other Hymns are quite explicit: Demeter requests an altar to be built in Eleusis
above the Callichoron (HH 2, 270-274)8 and Apollo specifies that a precinct bearing
the name Delphinios be built to him (HH 3, 490-496). Anchises instead describes his
pro­posed foundation of an altar in the vaguest of terms and significantly does not at
this point know with which goddess he is dealing, or that he is even certainly dealing
with a goddess; he has just provided a list of guesses that included Artemis, Leto,
Aphrodite, Themis, and Athena (l. 92-99). An audience might well have thought of a
local cult of Aphrodite at this point in the poem, but it seems that Anchises is merely
pro­posing a generically appropriate action to win the favour of a divinity. The hymn
then is not devoid of reference to religious experience and cult worship, but at the
same time it contains no aetiology of specific cult practice.9

Reference or allusion to localized cult worship in a Hymn does not necessarily pro­
vide a secure marker of the poem’s place of composition and original performance.
The attention given to Eleusis in the Hymn to Demeter makes composition for per­
for­mance at Eleusis a strong possibility,10 but it has been argued based upon certain
omissions of detail that its author had no direct knowledge of Eleusinian cult or
the area of Eleusis.11 However, such pointers are often suggestive. In the Hymn to
Hermes, the possible allusion to the cult of the Twelve Gods at Olympia discussed
above make this an attractive, if uncertain, location for its composition.12 Moreover,

7. See for this view Podbielski 1971, p. 44-45; Càssola (ed.) 1975, p. 549, and Van Eck 1978,
p. 42.
8. On Eleusinian topography and its correspondence with the hymn, see Richardson (ed.) 1974,
p. 326-330.
9. For a discussion of the Hymn’s religious value, see in this volume Schein, p. 295-312.
10. See Richardson (ed.) 1974, p. 12, and West (ed.) 2003, p. 8.
11. Clinton 1986.
12. See West (ed.) 2003, p. 13-14, and Johnston 2002, p. 128-130.

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 174 a. faulkner

such references to localized cults at Eleusis and Olympia, where there were large
Pan-Hellenic festivals, support the hypothesis that these hymns were composed for
per­formance at a festival. The Hymn to Delian Apollo (l. 146-178) explicitly invokes
the Delian festival and the bard’s performance in a competitive environment, and
the Homeric Hymns have long been thought to be proems to longer epic recitations
at festivals, a view for which there is a good deal of support. Pindar tells us that
the Homeridae commenced their songs with a prelude to Zeus (Nemean 1, 2), and a
common closing formula (μεταβήσομαι ἄλλον ἐς ὕμνον / καὶ σεῖο καὶ ἄλλης
μνήσομ’ ἀοιδῆς) indicates transition to another song.13
The narrative of the Hymn to Aphrodite, however, with its lack of focus upon cult,
suggests a context other than a public religious festival for its original performance.
The poem contains a prophecy about the birth of Aeneas and the fate of his race
(l. 196-197) that is very similar to the prophecy about Aeneas delivered by Poseidon
in the Iliad (20, 307-308). These two prophecies long ago led to the hypothesis that
the Hymn to Aphrodite was composed for a family in the Troad, who claimed descent
from Aeneas.14
In the past thirty years some very attractive literary interpretations of the poem
have been proposed, which explain the narrative of the hymn without recourse to the
hypo­thesis that it was composed for such a family: Peter Smith has demonstrated the
con­sistent juxtaposition of mortal and immortal in the hymn,15 while Jenny Clay has
argued that the hymn establishes a new order, in which gods and mortals no longer
inter­act intimately – in this way the hymn can be seen to establish Aphrodite’s sphere
of influence, by limiting her power to join men and gods, just as powers and pre­ro­
gatives are defined for the gods and goddesses in the other Hymns.16 But such literary
inter­pretations have unnecessarily been placed in opposition to the view that the
Hymn to Aphrodite was composed for a family in the Troad. Smith cast doubt on the
existence of such a family by pointing out that later sources for their existence, such
as the Hellenistic Demetrius of Skepsis, were not necessarily reliable,17 but there is
still no strong reason to doubt that a family in the Troad acted as patrons for these
poems, even if they were not as described by later historians.18 And Smith’s excellent
obser­vation that the poem places emphasis upon the theme of mortality, a leitmotiv
also in the Iliad, in no way contradicts the view that the narrative gives extraordinary
attention to Aeneas and his lineage. For not only do the prophecies about the lineage
of Aeneas in Iliad 20 and the Hymn to Aphrodite make attractive the view that there
existed a family in the Troad for whom the poem was composed, but the concentrated

13. See Richardson (ed.) 1974, p. 324-325, and Furley, Bremer 2001, I, p. 41-43.
14. For a summary of this position with further bibliography see Faulkner (ed.) 2008a, p. 4.
15. Smith 1981a.
16. Clay 1989.
17. Smith 1981b.
18. Cf. West (ed.) 2003, p. 15, n. 17.

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 the performance of the homeric hymn to aphrodite 175

attention paid to Aeneas and his descent throughout the poem also points strongly in
this direction.19
If this is correct then one must return to the idea that the Hymn to Aphrodite was
intended for performance in a court setting rather than at a religious festival, perhaps
at a banquet before honoured guests. Jenny Clay has pointed out that although the
Homeric Hymns may at times have been performed in public spaces, they could also
have been performed in more private settings, such as is depicted in the Odyssey,
when Demodocus sings at the court of the Phaeacians: before he enters upon the
tale of the Trojan horse Demodocus is said to begin “from the god” (ὁ δὲ ὁρμηθεὶς
θεοῦ ἄρχετο, 8, 499).20 The Phaeacian episode is a particularly apposite tableau
for the hypothesis that the Hymn to Aphrodite was originally performed in a court
setting, especially given the general similarity between the narrative of the Hymn
to Aphrodite and the story of the affair of Aphrodite and Ares sung by Demodocus
for the Phaeacians earlier in the scene (8, 266-366): both the Hymn and the tale of
Demodocus deal with an inappropriate affair of Aphrodite and her shame before the
gods, and the author of the Hymn seems to have known the story of Aphrodite’s infi­
de­lity with Ares.21 Clay suggests that “it may be significant that Demodocus’ two
performances take place in different contexts; whereas the heroic episodes from the
Trojan War are sung as after-dinner entertainments in Alcinoos’ palace, the other is
per­formed in what is apparently a public festival in the agora, accompanied by athletic
con­tests and dancing.”22 One might not wish to make too much of the differences of
form and subject matter between Demodocus’ private and public performances in the
Phaeacian episode,23 but this depiction in Homer of the performance by one singer
of both extended narratives about gods and short prooimia about gods before heroic
narratives certainly suggests that hexameter hymns of different scales existed quite
early. Moreover, Demodocus, whose very name implies that he is a public figure,24

19. For a fuller discussion of this topic, see Faulkner (ed.) 2008a, p. 4-10. For a discussion of the
relation between hymn and enkômion, see in this volume Prioux, p. 135-150 ; Bremer, p. 156-
165.
20. See Clay 1997, p. 494-498.
21. See Faulkner (ed.) 2008a, p. 31-34.
22. Clay 1997, p. 497.
23. Demodocus sings three songs in the episode: the first, at king Alcinous’ palace, tells of the
quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles (8, 62-96); the second, at the agora where there is a
great crowd gathered for the athletic contests, tells of Aphrodite’s affair with Ares (8, 266-366);
the third, back in Alcinous’ palace after dinner, tells the tale of the Trojan horse (8, 499-535).
The first and the third songs about the Trojan War are close to Odysseus’ heart, cause him to
cry, and lead to the disclosure of his identity to his hosts, a revelation appropriate to the more
private setting. The affair of Aphrodite and Ares may bring to mind the issue of Penelope’s
fidelity, but the tale is nonetheless enough removed from Odysseus’ personal experience to
allow him to enjoy the performance along with the Phaeacians at the public celebration (8, 367-
369). See Garvie (ed.) 1994, p. 293-295.
24. Cf. ibid., p. 248-249.

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 176 a. faulkner

plays a role that is ultimately somewhere between that of a public servant and a
court poet. He is an honoured public figure, impelled to sing by the ἄριστοι of the
Phaeacians whom he pleases (8, 90-91), but he can also play a more private role
for the Phaeacian court, just as Phemius sings of the return of the Achaeans for the
gathering of the suitors in the first book of the poem (1, 325-327).

In the end, the evidence of literary depictions can of course only be pressed so
far, but the Odyssey at least suggests that the subject matter of the Hymn, much as
the tale of Aphrodite’s affair with Ares, might have been appropriate for recitation
before a celebration of royal patrons, combined perhaps with dancing, song, and
reci­tation of other poetry. One might not want to rule out the performance of the
Hymn to Aphrodite at a festival in honour of the goddess, particularly in subsequent
performances,25 but the lack of allusion to any localized cult practice nonetheless
accords with the view that a smaller court setting is the most probable place for its
ori­ginal performance.

25. HH 3, 174-176 (ἡμεῖς δ’ ὑμέτερον κλέος οἴσομεν, ὅσσον ἐπ’ αἶαν  / ἀνθρώπων
στρεφόμεσθα πόλεις εὖ ναιεταώσας), imply re-performance of the hymn at different
festivals. See Parker 1991, p. 1-2, who questions the occasional or context-bound nature of the
Homeric hymns.

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