The thirty-three poems known collectively as the Homeric Hymns are from a thematic and narrative viewpoint no doubt of very great antiquity, but they are traditionally situated in the eighth through sixth centuries BCE.  The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (hereafter HHA) is by the preponderant scholarly consensus considered to have been put together some time in the latter part of the seventh century BCE.

Although writing may possibly have been involved in its ‘composition’, like the rest, the HHA was essentially oral poetry — not by the poet (or, more probably, the poets) whom we conventionally designate as ‘Homer’ and to whom we attribute the Iliad and the Odyssey.  This poet may have been one individual or simply a cover-name for a number of poets working in the same oral tradition and performing many of the same tales.  Because the poems under discussion are composed in the traditional poetic meter of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, the dactylic hexameter, and deploy many of the same linguistic formulas and phrases as found in the two epics, they have faute de mieux been dubbed the Homeric Hymns.

They are formally structured, but take some liberties with the idealized template of the genre.  In particular in the huge expansion of that part of the formal hymn known as the hypomnēsis (ὑπόμνησις), or the ‘reminder’, we have the main part of each work.  A brief examination of formal hymnal structure will locate this hypertrophic development of the hypomnēsis into what becomes the Homeric hymns that have survived to our own day.

A typical structure of the hymn (ὕμνος hymnos is a word that in Greek simply refers to some kind of ‘song or poetic ode in honor and celebration of a deity’ performed by a so-called rhapsode, or ‘stitcher of song’) entails, in broad strokes, 1) some kind of greeting and invocation with epithets appropriately addressing the particular capacities in which the deity is being addressed (e.g., ‘protector of sea-farers’) and some attributive identification of the supplicated deity (often in a relative clause –e.g., ‘you who dwell in Killa’);  2) a reminder [hypomnēsis (ὑπόμνησις)] of past reciprocities (e.g., ‘I once built you a great altar for thanks when you …’), an occasion for some usually flattering account of the deity’s birth and exploits ; and 3) the actual request or prayer (e.g., ‘so come to my aid today’),  and a farewell.  It is the expansion of that when you … clause into a virtually independent narrative about the deity and his or her birth, deeds and doings, etc. that constitutes the core of a Homeric hymn.  Sometimes this narrative ‘core’ can be quite short, as in Hymn 11 of 5 lines to the goddess Athena, or may reach extraordinary length, as in Hymn 4 of 580 lines to the god Hermes.  The hymn (5) to Aphrodite with which we are concerned here occupies at 293 lines a position of intermediate length.

In this ‘series’ I translate the HHA in chunks of about 20 to 40 lines per entry, and may on occasion add a further entry with some thoughts about the language and narrative of the lines translated.  These secondary additions to a given translation will be marked as COMMENTARY, and thus, if you find that this material is not exactly your cup of ouzo, you can just ignore those particular postings on my blog.

But I hope you stick with them, for this is a truly marvelous piece of poetry – witty, touching, compelling.  And above all, despite coming down to us from some three millennia or more ago, whether you are a woman or a man, young or old, gay or straight, you will in all likelihood find aspects and parts of yourself here.  And you will certainly encounter some situation or experience or two happily or unhappily reminiscent and familiar enough to you from your own peripatetic explorations of that eternal minefield we today call ‘relationships’ and eternally attempt to negotiate as optimistically as we can, always hoping for ‘the one’!  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Although I begin with a discussion of the Greek, bear with me. It’s not really that hard.  And I believe I can make you appreciate both the linguistic beauty of the poetry and its consequent evocative suggestiveness for the narrative about Aphrodite that is now to follow.

Here is the first line of the HHA:

Μοῦσά μοι ἔννεπε ἔργα πολυχρύσου Ἀφροδίτης
Mousa moi ennepe erga polukhrusou Aphroditēs

This opening line of the poem is a dead giveaway any person of that era would immediately have recognized as a conscious evocation of the first line of the Odyssey:

Look at the two of them right next to each other: line 1 of the Odyssey and line 1 of the HHA:

Μοῦσά μοι ἔννεπε ἔργα πολυχρύσου Ἀφροδίτης
Mousa moi ennepe erga polukhrusou Aphroditēs

Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, polutropon, hos mala polla

Now let’s add the first line of the Iliad, which would just as surely have been ‘heard’ by the audience:

Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
Mēnin aeide thea Pēlēiadō Akhilēos

Together, then, the three lines look as follows (HHA 1, Odyssey 1.1, Iliad 1.1):

Μοῦσά μοι ἔννεπε ἔργα πολυχρύσου Ἀφροδίτης

Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ

Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

And for purposes of the discussion, let’s bold-and-italicize them:

Μοῦσά μοι ἔννεπε ἔργα πολυχρύσου Ἀφροδίτης

Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ

Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

Now let’s do the same for the transliteration of the Greek:

Mousa moi ennepe erga polukhrusou Aphroditēs

Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, polutropon, hos mala polla

Mēnin aeide thea Pēlēiadō Akhilēos

One more formal point about all of Homeric and Homeric-derived poetry (indeed all of Greek poetry) involves the meter, which in this case is the dactylic hexameter (we have that in English poetry too, although it is not as common as our iambic pentameter).  All ancient Greek (and Latin) poetry is a varyingly formalized sequence of long and short syllables, and we represent these ‘longs’ and ‘shorts’ with ‘suprasegmental’ (think of these as floating right above each syllable) markings which are represented, respectively, as – and ˘ . [If this matter of Greek poetic meter fascinates you as much as it does me, let me point you to my detailed ‘course’ on the matter here – that may well be a great deal more than what you are looking for, but there it is!]

Thus, the standard (ideal) dactylic hexameter has six metra (singular: metron) of three syllables each except for the final one that has only two syllable — as follows (where | marks a metron boundary and x represents a sp-called anceps — either short or long):

– ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – x

Because ‘substitutions’ are permissible in all but the final metron, any of the first five metra  – ˘ ˘ can also appear as  – –  (i.e., one long substitutes for two shorts);  but  the initial long is never replaced by two shorts – thus metra of the type ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘ or ˘ ˘ –do not occur in the dactylic hexameter.  Following are some examples of perfectly legitimate variations (the first is the ‘ideal’ version):

– ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – x

– ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – –| – ˘ ˘| – x

– ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – – | – ˘ ˘| – – | – x

– ˘ ˘| – –| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – x

– ˘ ˘| – – | – ˘ ˘| – –| – ˘ ˘| – x

– – | – ˘ ˘| – – | – ˘ ˘| – – | – x

– ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – – | – –| – – | – x

etc.

A standard feature of the Greek (and Latin) hexameter is the caesura, a formal ‘break’ – i.e., word end within a metron – after the first or second syllable of a tri-syllabic third (most common) or fourth (less common) metron, and we represent each as follows with a caret ^ :

– ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ^˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – x

– ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘^ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – x

– ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ^˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – x

– ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – ˘^ ˘| – ˘ ˘| – x

(Do note that a caesura may appear in metra other than the third or fourth, but this is much less common.)  Either work it our for yourself from my transliterations above or, more simply, just take my word for it that in the lines above the bold text runs up to the caesura, and the italic text is what follows after the caesura.  These breaks are so deeply ingrained in the traditional  ‘dactylic hexameter mind’ that each half of the line at times amounts almost to a unified thought or phrase and is often so understood (there is vast evidence for this proposition about metrically constrained phrase-formulas, but it is not something I am going to get into here:  but do feel free to explore the whole business of metrics in my ‘course’ referenced above).

Now, given this hasty back-ground, look once more at line 1 of the HHA in relation to, respectively, the opening line of the Odyssey and the opening line of the Iliad:

Μοῦσά μοι ἔννεπε ἔργα πολυχρύσου Ἀφροδίτης
Mousa moi ennepe erga polukhrusou Aphroditēs

Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, polutropon, hos mala polla

Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
Mēnin aeide thea Pēlēiadō Akhilēos

Now let’s do the same for the transliteration of the Greek:

Mousa moi ennepe erga polukhrusou Aphroditēs

Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, polutropon, hos mala polla

Mēnin aeide thea Pēlēiadō Akhilēos

You can readily see that similarly the final half of each line lines up each with the others: epithet polukhrusou (πολυχρύσου) with epithet polutropon (πολύτροπον) and name Aphroditēs (Ἀφροδίτης) with name Akhilēos (Ἀχιλῆος).

The upshot of this obviously conscious manipulation of traditional lexical formulas is that Aphrodite’s tale is both overtly and subliminally cast in the epic mold of those great heroes Achilles in the Iliad and Odysseus in the Odyssey – a kind of feminine consciousness about a female long before women’s lib!  After all, why should not a goddess too be heroic, doing if not great deeds of martial daring and death then great deeds of erotic passion and play?  (By the way, let’s not forget that the goddess of love Aphrodite [Roman Venus] got it on rather hotly with the god of war Ares [Roman Mars]).

Finally, isn’t it marvelous how much deeper you can penetrate into the powerfully evocative sub-text of this text if you know some Greek and a bit about the actual lingustic traditions on which it so openly draws – almost marvelous enough to make you want to start studying some ancient Greek?