The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite by Andrew Faulkner

West, after his reconstruction of the Hymn in a paper of 2001, 8 reviews here apparent Homeric parallels that, according to him, allow us to put the Hymn back at least to 650 BCE, and analyzes its influence on other poems.ģ. “The First Homeric Hymn to Dionysus” (29-43). This is a judicious position, more useful to readers than the unwavering conviction held by other scholars (for example, Davies in the very similar problems of dating Cyclic poems. The synthesis is clear, and the proposals for the dates of the hymns in some cases are logically inconclusive.

Andrew Faulkner after reviewing briefly the history of the collection, from the noteworthy 1488 edition by Chalcondyles, deals with the chief problems of the collection as a whole: the hymns as examples of oral poetics, the complicated dating (the importance of linguistic features as a criterion to date the poems being especially problematic), the difficulties of reconstructing the performance contexts and functions of the poems, the definition of the genre, and the balance between panhellenism and local connections that is found in them. “Modern Scholarship on the Homeric Hymns” (pp. The book is preceded by an Introduction and divided into two parts: the first consists of studies about the major Hymns and the second deals with some concrete questions about the collection. The book is edited by Andrew Faulkner, author of a fine and learned commentary of the Hymn to Aphrodite, with contributions by some of the best specialists in the field. As a result, this collection of interpretative essays (the first one on this topic) is especially welcome. 4 However, after works like those of Clay 5 and Rudhardt, 6 the assessment of the Hymns changed dramatically and today there are many varied and interesting studies. 3 As for studies of individual hymns, Nicholas Richardson’s excellent edition and commentary deserves mention. Modern editions include Allen-Halliday-Sikes, 1 Humbert, 2 and Càssola (the latter is the best). For many centuries, scholarship was scarcely interested in the Homeric Hymns, both because of the heterogeneity of the collection and the perception that they were minor works in the corpus of Greek literature.

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite by Andrew Faulkner