Thomas W. Allen, E. E. Sikes, Commentary on the Homeric Hymns

HYMN TO APOLLO

BIBLIOGRAPHY

O. GRUPPE, die griech. Culte u. Mythen i. p. 523 f., 1887. A. FICK, in Bezzenberger Beiträge xvi. (1890), p. 19 f. R. PEPPMÜLLER, Bemerkungen zu den hom. Hymnen, Philologus, 1894, p. 253-279. R. Y. TYRRELL, The Homeric Hymns, Hermathena, 1894, p. 40-41. T. W. ALLEN, J. H. S., 1897, p. 241-252. L. DYER, Gods in Greece, p. 354 f., 1891. K. WERNICKE in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl. art. “Apollon,” 1896. A. LANG, The Homeric Hymns (Translation), p. 12 f., 1899. HILLER VON GÄRTRINGEN in Pauly-Wissowa, art. “Delphoi” (Geschichte), 1901.

I. Subject.—The poet sings of Apollo, at whose approach even the gods tremble; but Leto rejoices in her strong son. She visited many isles and cities before his birth, but all feared to receive her, except Delos, to whom Leto promised that Apollo should love the island beyond all others. Leto's delivery was stopped by the jealousy of Hera; but finally Eilithyia came, and the goddess brought forth her son, who forthwith burst his swaddling-clothes and claimed his prerogatives—the lyre, the bow, and the gift of prophecy. Many cities and lands are his, but chiefly he delights in Delos, where the Ionians are gathered together with song and dance in his honour. Most famous is the chorus of Delian women, whom the blind Chian poet begs to remember him; he will never cease to sing of Apollo, Leto's son.

Apollo went to Pytho; and thence to Olympus, where he accompanies on his lyre the dance of the gods. His success in love could furnish many themes for song, but the singer chooses the story of the god's search for an oracular temple. He left Olympus and passed southward through many peoples until he reached the spring of Telphusa, near Haliartus. There he wished to found his oracle, but the nymph dissuaded him and suggested Crisa; he complied, and his temple was built beneath Parnassus. Hard by was a fountain, where he met a dragon which ravaged the place. This monster had reared Typhaon, whom Hera bare in wrath with Zeus. Apollo slew the dragon and gained his title of Pythius. Angry with Telphusa for her treachery in sending him to a place infested by the dragon, he returned to her and stopped her water with a shower of rocks from an overhanging cliff. Then he bethought him of a priesthood, and saw Cretans sailing from Cnossus. He met them in the form of a dolphin, and diverted the course of their ship to Crisa, where he revealed himself as a god. The Cretans built an altar on the shore and followed him to Pytho. Apollo promised that they should live on the offerings of pilgrims, but warned them that if they fell into evil ways they would be subjected to the dominion of others.

II. The composition of the hymn.—The hymn to Apollo, in its present form, may be read as a continuous poem. But the continuity lies only on the surface, and even the most casual reader cannot fail to be struck by the abrupt transition at v. 179, after a passage in which the Chian poet appears to take leave of his audience and to finish his theme. Accordingly, from the time of Ruhnken, the hymn has been divided into two parts, commonly known as the “Delian” and “Pythian” hymns. Gemoll very properly refuses to bisect the document, on the ground (1) that it was considered a single poem at least as early as the second century A.D.; (2) that many of the arguments against its original unity must be discounted; and (3) that even if there has been a conflation, the division into two parts is unscientific, as the present hymn may well contain more than two fragments or complete poems. Gemoll indeed allows that the hymn does not convey the impression of unity; but, as his arguments are mainly directed against its disintegration by Ruhnken and subsequent editors, it is necessary to examine the evidence afresh, and to consider how far Ruhnken's position is sound.

A. External evidence.—Thucydides (iii. 104) cites lines 146-150 as “ἐκ τοῦ προοιμίου Ἀπόλλωνος”, and adds “ἐτελεύτα τοῦ ἐπαίνου ἐς τάδε τὰ ἔπη” (quoting 165-172). Here the “ἔπαινος” may obviously mean, not the whole hymn, but that part of it which contains the eulogy on the Delian women. Aristides, however (ii. 558), quotes 169 f., using the words “καταλύων τὸ προοίμιον”; and, if he quoted at first-hand, it would be a clear proof that in the second century A.D. there was a hymn to Apollo, which ended with the invocation of the Delians by the blind Chian. Against this Hermann reasonably argues that Aristides was simply quoting from Thucydides (compare “προοίμιον” in both authors), and wrongly took “τοῦ ἐπαίνου” in Thucydides to mean “τοῦ προοιμίου”.¹ The probability that Aristides did not know the hymn at first-hand is increased by the fact, observed in connexion with the “Ἀθηναίων πολιτεία”, that all his quotations from Solon are found in that treatise (see Sandys p. liv); there is thus a strong presumption that he was generally unfamiliar with the less-known early poetry. Moreover, that the hymn was a single document by the time of Aristides is proved by the citations of his contemporaries, i.e. Pausanias (x. 37. 5 “Ὅμηρος ἔν τε Ἰλιάδι ὁμοίως καὶ ὕμνῳ εἰς Ἀπόλλωνα”) and Athenaeus (22 C, quoting v. 515, “Ὅμηρος ἢ τῶν Ὁμηριδῶν τις ἐν τῷ εἰς Ἀπόλλωνα ὕμνῳ”).² The testimony of later writers (Eustath. 1602. 25, and Byz. Steph. 618 “ἐν τῷ εἰς Ἀπόλλωνα ὕμνῳ”) confirms the earlier authorities.

There is therefore nothing in the language of Thucydides to suggest that he knew of a “Delian” hymn ending at line 178, and on the other hand, as Gemoll observes, the historian would hardly have written “τοῦ προοιμίου Ἀπόλλωνος”, if he had been acquainted with more than one Homeric hymn to Apollo. As the so-called “Pythian” hymn is certainly much older than Thucydides, the inference is that the unity of the document extends back to the end of the fifth century B.C. at the latest. Gemoll further suggests that Aristophanes, as he seems to quote from both the first and last parts of the hymn (see on 114 and 443), recognised a single hymn. This argument is of little value in itself, for Aristophanes might, of course, have cited from two hymns as much as from one;³ but it may be conceded that, if Thucydides was unaware of the existence of separate Delian and Pythian parts, his contemporary and fellow-countryman was equally ignorant.

Internal evidence.—(1) The separatists assume that vv. 165 f. are obviously the end of one hymn, and 179 f. belong to another. This view is accepted in the present edition for the reasons stated on p. 63 f.; but, as Gemoll points out, the arguments commonly brought forward are not in themselves conclusive. The “farewell” to the Delian women (“χαίρετε δ᾽ ὑμεῖς κτλ.” 166) might mark the close of a digression in the hymn, not the end of the whole hymn; cf. Theog. 963 where a similar formula marks a transition to another subject. Again, vv. 177178 “αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν οὐ λήξω κτλ.” are not necessarily a formula of conclusion, although, of course, they are quite appropriate to that position;⁴ the two lines might have served to introduce Apollo's later exploits, after the digression on the Delians.

(2) Kiesel and Baumeister favour the theory of an early Delian and later Pythian hymn, on the ground of a similarity of structure and subject matter which they detect in the two parts. For example, Baumeister compares 1-13 with 182-206, 19 f. with 207 f., the wanderings of Leto with the journey of Apollo, the jealousy of Hera with that of Telphusa, the Delian with the Pythian festival. Of these “pairs,” only the first (1-13 and 182-206) is at all striking; and, in any case, it need not follow that these parallel passages are by different authors; a poet may repeat himself, as well as copy another.

(3) The unity of the hymn has been denied on artistic and literary grounds. One fact is certain, that the earlier part of the hymn was recited at a Delian festival to an Ionian audience. But at 182 the poem leaves Delos, which is not mentioned again, and passes to quite different episodes in Apollo's career, chief of which is the foundation of the Dorian oracle at Pytho. It may be argued that there is no reason why the Chian bard should not have dealt with these later achievements; he need not have been so parochial as to exclude from his Delian hymn all myths which do not bear on the god's connexion with the island. Again, if it be urged that some final reference to Delos might be expected at the end of the whole poem, an answer is ready that such criticism is purely subjective, and that we must not force ancient documents to comply with modern ideas of artistic propriety. Even if there is a natural break at 178, the same author (i.e. the Chian poet) may have composed the rest of the hymn as a separate rhapsody; in this he handled myths, foreign, it is true, to Delos, but not foreign to his subject, which is after all not Delos, but Apollo.

But, when all these conservative arguments have been allowed their due weight, it is still practically impossible to reverse the judgment of Ruhnken and his followers. The fatal objection to the theory of unity rests on historical and mythological grounds. As has been conceded above, there is no prima facie impossibility in supposing that a bard at Delos handled the theme of Apollo's victory over the dragon at Pytho. But the circumstances of the Delian panegyris must be borne in mind: it was an assembly of Ionians (152); a certain non-Ionic element was indeed present, but these aliens came chiefly from the Aegean islands (see on 157), and the festival was, in fact, essentially insular. The character of the “Delian” part of the hymn is entirely in keeping with this insularity; Phoebus has many temples, and travels far and wide (141 f.); but his heart is in Delos (146), which he loves more than any other island, and more than the mainland (139). It is difficult to agree with Dr. Verrall's theory as to the meaning of the whole hymn (see below, p. 68); but he is undoubtedly right in laying stress on the fundamental difference between the Ionian religion of Apollo at Delos, and the Dorian religion at Pytho. In Dr. Verrall's words (p. 17), the Delian hymnist's “range of view, and the government of his god are strictly limited, according to his own full and exact description (30-44, 142-145), to the Aegean archipelago. Even the coast of the surrounding land he treats merely as a framework enclosing the beloved islands; he mentions scarcely a point in the coast which is not peninsular, and within the sea-line knows nothing except what might be seen from the sea. His Ionians are mariners exclusively (155), and have a deity like themselves.”⁵ Moreover, the Delian cult was not only Ionian and insular, but also in part oracular (see on 81); and it is barely conceivable that a poet, who adopted the exclusive standpoint of the Delians, should have devoted the rest of his hymn (three times as large as the first part) to the praises of a rival Dorian oracle. At the present day we are apt to take a wrong perspective of early Apolline religion—a perspective natural enough, inasmuch as it rests on authority which, though not so old as the hymn, is still ancient. Callimachus composed a catholic and eclectic hymn to Apollo, in which local and racial distinctions are blurred; still earlier, in the age of faith, Pindar and Aeschylus honoured Delos and Delphi equally, and tried to harmonise the two rival cults,⁶ following, perhaps, the example of statesmen like Pisistratus and Polycrates, who respected both the shrines ( Suid. s.v. “Πύθια καὶ Δήλια, Πύθιον”, and “ταῦτά σοι”). But we cannot look for a quixotic spirit in a poet who must have preceded the age of Pindar by several generations, and who sang to an Ionian audience assembled in honour of a local and tribal god.

The “Pythian” part of the hymn, on the other hand, is Dorian and continental in its outlook (see below, p. 67 f.). Without laying undue stress on the niceties of style, a critic cannot fail to notice its inferiority; and few will probably dissent from the judgment of Mr. Lang, who sees in the hymn to Apollo “the work of a good poet, in the earlier part; and in the latter part, or second hymn, the work of a bad poet, selecting unmanageable passages of myth, and handling them pedantically and ill” (p. 19). His theme—the foundation of the most famous oracle in the world—offered a splendid opportunity; but the hymn shows, by sins of omission and commission alike, that its writer could not rise to the level of his subject. Dr. Verrall (p. 6 f.) remarks that he passes over in silence almost everything characteristic of Pytho—the chasm, the tripod, the omphalos, the crowds of worshippers, the priestess herself. To these omissions may be added the silence of the hymn on the purification of Apollo from blood-guiltiness, which was a primitive and important article of the Pythian religion.⁷ There is no explicit reference to the preApolline worship of Gaea or Themis (see on 300), and no word of Poseidon, who, unlike Dionysus, was at Pytho at an early date. This neglect of opportunities is ascribed by Dr. Verrall to the insincerity of the “compiler” of the present document; but it may rather be due to the taste, or want of taste, of a writer who seems to have been chiefly interested in miracles and etymological speculation. Very different is the spirit of the blind Chian, who describes the birth of Apollo and the glories of the Delian festival with so much strength and vivacity.

It therefore follows that the hymn is a compilation of at least two originally independent poems. Some scholars (as Baumeister) are content with this bisection; but they eliminate from the second hymn the episode of Typhaon (305-355), which is sometimes regarded as a later addition. The passage, however, bears no signs of late workmanship: it is a fragment of genuine antiquity, although it has been forced into its present context with some violence.⁸ The hymn has thus been pieced together from three different sources; and, this being its history, there is of course a possibility that its component parts may have been even more numerous. Various German critics, from the time of Groddeck, have argued for this disintegration. None of these speculations, however, are more than plausible at best; nor are they recommended by any historical or mythological difficulties. Groddeck, for example, considered 1-13 to be a separate poem or fragment. But there is absolutely no reason why the Chian poet should not have composed this passage as the exordium of his hymn at Delos. Again, Baumeister rightly rejects Hermann's view that the latter part of the hymn (from 207) is the product of two interwoven poems, in honour of Apollo Pythius and Telphusius respectively. Baumeister's criticism of Hermann is to the point: librarios castigat, ubi poeta erat castigandus. Other attempts to dismember the hymn will be noted in the commentary.

IV. Date.—The hymn to Apollo (or at least the Delian part) is probably the oldest in the collection, but its age cannot be fixed with exactness. The date and authorship are, indeed, expressly mentioned by the scholiast on Pind. Nem.ii. 2, where the hymn is attributed to Cynaethus of Chios, who “first rhapsodized the poems of Homer at Syracuse, in the sixty-ninth Olympiad” (504 B.C.). The blind Chian may have been Cynaethus; we have, at all events, no reason to doubt the correctness of the scholiast's tradition in this respect; but the date is certainly far too low. The evidence of history in connexion with the Ionian assembly, is usually brought forward as an argument for an early period; and this argument is of some weight, though not in itself conclusive. The panegyris must have become famous by the beginning of the eighth century B.C., when the Messenians are said to have sent a secret embassy to Delos, and a hymn was composed for them by Eumelus of Corinth ( Paus.iv. 4. 1). The Delian hymn to Apollo might therefore belong to this century, in which case it would be contemporary with some of the rejected epics. At this time, the Ionians on the coast of Asia Minor and in the islands attained the height of their prosperity. Duncker (History of Greece vol. ii. ch. 9) thinks that the hymn must be earlier than 700 B.C., when the Ionians suffered a shock from the invasion of Cimmerians. But the invaders did not reach the islands, although they ravaged a great part of Asia Minor; the festival was not apparently interrupted, and its splendour was even increased in the time of Polycrates and Pisistratus. It was not before the defeat of the Ionians by Persia that it declined in prestige, until it was revived by the Athenians at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war.⁹ History, therefore, would allow any date to the Delian hymn between the eighth century (or even earlier) and the time of Pisistratus. But the lower limit is impossible on other grounds; for, as we have seen, “the hymn to Apollo” is attributed to Homer by Thucydides, and probably also by Aristophanes. The first part of the hymn must thus be considerably older than the fifth century. This conclusion is supported by archaeological evidence, which points to a date not subsequent to 600 B.C. The language, which has been exhaustively treated by various German scholars,¹⁰ has words and forms which do not occur in Homer; but on the whole it is “Homeric” in character, and seems to belong to a period when epic literature, if in its decline, was still a living force. On the question of a “living” digamma see p. lxxi.

The age of the non-Delian part is equally uncertain. The episode of Typhaon has been thought later than Stesichorus, as he, and not the author of the hymn, is mentioned in the E. M. 772, in connexion with the genealogy of Typhaon. This argument, however, is quite worthless (see p. liii, and note on 306). The fragment is in the style of the Theogony, and, as far as can be judged from style, may belong to the early Hesiodean school. The “Pythian” part may be later than the Delian, but here again the evidence is inconclusive. On the other hand Fick (B. B. xvi. p. 21) holds that Cynaethus, the author of the Delian hymn, probably took the Pythian hymn as his model. An early date is required by the absence of the place-name Delphi, and by the fact that chariot-races seem to have been still unknown at Pytho.¹¹ The terminus ante quem must therefore be placed at 586 B.C., when these races were instituted (see further on 542). The temple built by Trophonius and Agamedes was standing in the poet's time (cf. 299); it was burned in 548 B.C. ( Paus.x. 5. 5). The Pythian hymn cannot therefore be later than the beginning of the sixth century, and may be much older.¹²

V. Place of composition.—The locality is settled for the Delian hymn by the statement of the poet himself, who was an Ionian from Chios, and recited at Delos (172). This, of course, proves nothing for the rest of the hymn, since its unity cannot be accepted. According to the common view (see Baumeister p. 115), the first hymn is the work of a Homerid, the second belongs to the Hesiodean school. Gemoll, on the other hand, very properly remarks that there are reminiscences of Hesiod in the Delian part, and that the whole document shows the influence of Homer.¹³ All that can be inferred from internal evidence is, that the author of the Pythian part was familiar with Delphi, whose situation is accurately described (283); further, the episode of Telphusa and the reference to the curious custom at Onchestus are distinctly local, and seem to prove that the poem was composed on the mainland, and probably in central Greece. Its nearest analogy is the Shield of Heracles, which, if not genuinely “Hesiodean,” is certainly Boeotian. The tone of this poem is thoroughly Apolline; the contest takes place in the precinct of the Pagasaean Apollo (Scut. 70); the god favours Heracles, and finally causes the bones of the vanquished Cycnus to be washed away, because he plundered pilgrims on their way to Pytho (Scut. 480). As the Pythian hymn is so much concerned with Apollo's progress along the sacred way from Euboea to Delphi (see 214 f., 280), the local and religious interest of the two poems seems parallel. No stress can be laid (as against this view) on the misplacement of Boeotian localities (239 f.), whether this is due to ignorance or carelessness.

VI. Present state of the hymn.—As has been shown above, the hymn in its present composite form was known to the Greeks in the time of Pausanias and probably even of Thucydides. It would be interesting to know the date and nationality of the “editor”; and in this connexion Dr. Verrall has suggested an ingenious theory. In his view the hymn is a cento, divisible into at least four distinct parts, of which the oldest was a Delian hymn; an Athenian, under the dynasty of Pisistratus, collected from other sources, or added from his own pen, materials to form the present document. The compiler was influenced by religious and political motives, his object being to diminish the dignity of the Pythian oracle, and magnify the Delian cult of Apollo. The whole hymn, as there arranged, was an anti-Delphian “religious pasquinade.” This hypothesis cannot here be fully criticised; but most readers of Dr. Verrall's article will probably fail to be convinced that the hymn is not a genuine attempt to honour the Pythian, as well as the Delian, Apollo. At the same time, it is quite possible that the compiler was an Athenian in the age of Pisistratus. If we could unhesitatingly accept the tradition that the tyrant ordered a recension of “Homer,” the hymn to Apollo might have been edited, as well as the genuine Homeric poems, being itself classed as Homeric by common opinion. But the tendency of modern scholarship is to reject the tradition as unfounded.¹⁴ It is perhaps more natural to look for the editor in a place where the two great myths of Apollo—the birth at Delos and the fight with the Pythian dragon—were first united. This place was possibly Tegyra (see on 16); and Hiller von Gärtringen (in Pauly-Wissowa 2538) suggests that not only was the Pythian hymn of Boeotian origin, but that the whole composition was put together in Tegyra or elsewhere in Boeotia.

VII.