are not single poems, but fall into separate incomplete parts. Athenæus actually calls the whole 'the hymns to Apollo.' The Ionic portion of this hymn is probably the earliest work in the extant collection. It is quoted as Homer's by Thucydides (iii. 104), and Aristophanes (Birds, 575), and attributed by Didymus the grammarian to the rhapsode Kynæthus of Chios; which puts it, in point of antiquity, on a level with the rejected epics. The hymn to Hermes partly dates itself by giving seven strings to the original lyre as invented by that god. It must have been written when the old four-stringed lyre had passed, not only out of use, but out of memory. The beautiful fragment (vii.) on the capture of Dionysus by brigands looks like Attic work of the fifth or fourth century B.C. The Prelude to Pan (xix.) may be Alexandrian; that to Ares (viii.) suggests the fourth century A.D.
In spite of their bad preservation, our Hymns are delightful reading. That to Aphrodite, relating nothing but the visit of Aphrodite to Anchises shepherding his kine on Mount Ida, expresses perhaps more exquisitely than anything else in Greek literature that frank joy in physical life and beauty which is often supposed to be characteristic of Greece. The long hymn to Demeter, extant in only one MS., which was discovered last century at Moscow 'among pigs and chickens,' is perhaps the most beautiful of all. It is interesting as an early Attic or Eleusinian composition. Parts are perhaps rather fluent and weak, but most of the poem is worthy of the magnificent myth on which it is founded. Take one piece at the opening, where Persephone "was playing with Okeanos' deep-breasted daughters, and plucking flowers, roses and crocus and pretty pansies, in a soft meadow, and flags and hyacinth, and that great narcissus that Earth sent up for a snare to the rose-face maiden, doing service by God's will to Him of the Many Guests. The bloom of it was wondeiful, a marvel for gods undying and mortal men; from the root of it there grew out a hundred heads, and the incensed smell of it made all the wide sky laugh above, and all the earth laugh and the salt swell of the sea. And the girl in wonder reached out both her hands to take the beautiful thing to play with; then yawned the broad-trod ground by the Flat of Nysa, and the deathless steeds brake forth, and the Cronos-born king, He of the Many Names, of the Many Guests; and He swept her away on his golden chariot." The dark splendour of Aidôneus, "Him of the Many Thralls, of the Many Guests," is in the highest spirit of the saga.
4 Pind., Nem.2. Cf.Θ,499.
5 See esp. 31.
Iliad
BOOK I
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.
And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Jove and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people, because the son of Atreus had dishonoured Chryses his priest. Now Chryses had come to the ships of the Achaeans to free his daughter, and had brought with him a great ransom: moreover he bore in his hand the sceptre of Apollo wreathed with a suppliant’s wreath and he besought the Achaeans, but most of all the two sons of Atreus, who were their chiefs.
“Sons of Atreus,” he cried, “and all other Achaeans, may the gods who dwell in Olympus grant you to sack the city of Priam, and to reach your homes in safety; but free my daughter, and accept a ransom for her, in reverence to Apollo, son of Jove.”
On this the rest of the Achaeans with one voice were for respecting the priest and taking the ransom that he offered; but not so Agamemnon, who spoke fiercely to him and sent him roughly away. “Old man,” said he, “let me not find you tarrying about our ships, nor yet coming hereafter. Your sceptre of the god and your wreath shall profit you nothing. I will not free her. She shall grow old in my house at Argos far from her own home, busying herself with her loom and visiting my couch; so go, and do not provoke me or it shall be the worse for you.”
The
