The Homeric Hymns

Homeric Hymns, The

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Title: The Homeric Hymns A New Prose Translation; and Essays,
Literary and Mythological
Author: Andrew Lang

Release Date: July 20, 2005 [eBook #16338]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
HOMERIC HYMNS***

Transcribed from the 1899 George Allen edition by David Price, email
[email protected]

THE HOMERIC HYMNS A NEW PROSE TRANSLATION AND
ESSAYS, LITERARY AND MYTHOLOGICAL, by Andrew Lang
[Bust of Athene. Forming a vase; found at Athens now in the British

Museum. (Fifth Century B.C.): langi.jpg]

DEDICATION
To Henry Butcher A Little Token of A Long Friendship

PREFACE
To translate the Hymns usually called "Homeric" had long been my
wish, and, at the Publisher's suggestion, I undertook the work. Though
not in partnership, on this occasion, with my friend, Mr. Henry Butcher
(Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh), I have been
fortunate in receiving his kind assistance in correcting the proofs of the
longer and most of the minor Hymns. Mr. Burnet, Professor of Greek
in the University of St. Andrews, has also most generously read the
proofs of the translation. It is, of course, to be understood that these
scholars are not responsible for the slips which may have wandered into
my version, the work of one whose Greek has long "rusted in disuse."
Indeed I must confess that the rendering "Etin" for [Greek text] is
retained in spite of Mr. Butcher, who is also not wholly satisfied with
"gledes of light," and with "shieling" for a pastoral summer station in
the hills. But I know no word for it in English south of Tweed.
Mr. A. S. Murray, the Head of the Classical Department in the British
Museum, has also been good enough to read, and suggest corrections in
the preliminary Essays; while Mr. Cecil Smith, of the British Museum,
has obligingly aided in selecting the works of art here reproduced.
The text of the Hymns is well known to be corrupt, in places
impossible, and much mended by conjecture. I have usually followed
Gemoll (Die Homerischen Hymnen, Leipzig, 1886), but have
sometimes preferred a MS. reading, or emendations by Mr. Tyrrell, by
Mr. Verral, or the admirable suggestions of Mr. Allen. My chief object
has been to find, in cases of doubt, the phrases least unworthy of the
poets. Too often it is impossible to be certain as to what they really

wrote.
I have had beside me the excellent prose translation by Mr. John Edgar
(Thin, Edinburgh, 1891). As is inevitable, we do not always agree in
the sense of certain phrases, but I am far from claiming superiority for
my own attempts.
The method employed in the Essays, the anthropological method of
interpreting beliefs and rites, is still, of course, on its trial. What can
best be said as to its infirmities, and the dangers of its abuse, and of
system-making in the present state of the evidence, will be found in Sir
Alfred Lyall's "Asiatic Studies," vol. ii. chaps. iii. and iv. Readers
inclined to pursue the subject should read Mr. L. R. Farnell's "Cults of
the Greek States" (Clarendon Press, 1896), Mr. J. G. Frazer's "Golden
Bough," his "Pausanias," and Mr. Hartland's work on "The Myth of
Perseus." These books, it must be observed, are by no means always in
agreement with my own provisional theories.

ESSAYS INTRODUCTORY
THE SO-CALLED HOMERIC HYMNS
"The existing collection of the Hymns is of unknown editorship,
unknown date, and unknown purpose," says Baumeister. Why any man
should have collected the little preludes of five or six lines in length,
and of purely conventional character, while he did not copy out the
longer poems to which they probably served as preludes, is a mystery.
The celebrated Wolf, who opened the path which leads modern
Homerologists to such an extraordinary number of divergent theories,
thought rightly that the great Alexandrian critics before the Christian
Era, did not recognise the Hymns as "Homeric." They did not employ
the Hymns as illustrations of Homeric problems; though it is certain
that they knew the Hymns, for one collection did exist in the third
century B.C. {4} Diodorus and Pausanias, later, also cite "the poet in
the Hymns," "Homer in the Hymns"; and the pseudo-Herodotus
ascribes the Hymns to Homer in his Life of that author. Thucydides, in

the Periclean age, regards Homer as the blind Chian minstrel who
composed the Hymn to the Delian Apollo: a good proof of the