Homeric Hymns

Introduction

The anonymously written Homeric Hymns are thought to have been composed in the late 6th to early 7th century BCE, and the individual hymns vary in both authorship and composition date. Despite the name, this collection of 33 hymns is not attributed to Homer but rather uses a form of meter, or rhythmic pattern, associated with his poetry. This meter is termed dactylic hexameter: There are six feet per verse line (a foot is a metrical unit consisting of syllables), and each line of feet contains a dactyl (a word or phrase that creates a single stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables). The meter is widely employed in ancient Greek and Roman poetry.

Originally, the word hymn—derived from the Greek word humnos—denoted any song or form of poetry, but by the time the Homeric Hymns were composed, the word had come to denote only those poems honoring a god, which aligns with the modern sense of the word. The Homeric Hymns descend from epics originally passed through oral traditions but then transcribed as the Greeks acquired a unified written language; examples include Homer’s Iliad (an epic poem recounting the Trojan War) and Hesiod’s Works and Days (a collection of poems contemplating agriculture and human nature).