None of our poets feel obliged to tell us a clean, clear, linear story. The narrative is used more like the way that Hesiod uses narrative, as one device among many to structure the engagement that a person wants to make with the material. There are some stylistic measures that are similar in terms of using similes, digressions and some use of narrative in that Homeric way that introduces us to really intense stories. They are also drawn from that same Homeric register of connections between the many different aspects of ancient Greek. It’s pastiche drawn from lots of different dialects around ancient Greeks. There is also a similar diction to Homer’s language. In terms of this genre of writing in the Hyms the style is reminiscent of the epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod. These hymns are two particularly rich ones.

We are going to be reading just two the hymns that survived from antiquity, the extended Homeric Hymns to Apollo and Demeter. Individual hymns honour individual divinities. The subject of the praise of any of these individual divinities is the god to whom the hymn is given.

The hymns then are in praise of not only the gods but also to Homer.

They are probably written by a lot of people that followed Homer and wrote hymns in his style as a homage to him. They’re called ‘Homeric Hymns’ because they’re written in a Homeric style and they’re actually claimed to be written by Homer. In Greek, the term ‘ hymnos’, means a song in praise of a divinity.

Homeric Hymns by Homer