Homeric Hymns
- 33 hymns
- 5 long
- Apollo
- Aphrodite
- Hermes
- Demeter
- 28 shorter
- spec. preludes to longer poems
- orally composed
- like freestyle rap or jazz improv
- dactylic hexameter
- dactyl: metrical unit with one long and two short syllables
Hymn to Demeter
- Aidoneus = Hades
- Persephone depicted as young girl playing with friends in a flower meadow
- Hades, the criminal; Zeus, the instigator
- Demeter as servant in aristocratic family
- attempt at acquiring power
- religious rites
- replace feeling of being mother
- raises child as god
- making for loss
- acquisition of power
- get back at Hades/Zeus
- threat to Zeus?
- spite Hades
- male power
- threat of eliminating agriculture
- Persephone returned to upper world
- Hades tricks Persephone into eating pomegranate seed
- Hades gave it to her
- Persephone said he forced her
- willing, appeasement
- desire for power
- “Queen of the Underworld”
- Demeter overbearing?
Eleusinian Mysteries
- cult
- origin for these in the hymn
- connection between natural recurrence of seasons and human immortality
- promise of access to afterlife
- “VIP pass to special parts of underworld”
- what did they show initiates?
- perhaps grain
- metaphor for immortality of soul