Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, and Homerica

 Table of Contents

 Preface

 Introduction

 General

 The Boeotian School

 Life of Hesiod

 The Hesiodic Poems

 Date of the Hesiodic Poems

 Literary Value of Homer

 The Ionic School

 The Trojan Cycle

 The Homeric Hymns

 The Epigrams of Homer

 The Burlesque Poems

 The Contest of Homer and Hesiod

 The Works of Hesiod

 Works and Days (832 lines)

 The Divination by Birds (fragments)

 The Astronomy (fragments)

 The Precepts of Chiron (fragments)

 The Great Works (fragments)

 The Idaean Dactyls (fragments)

 The Theogony (1,041 lines)

 The Catalogues of Women and Eoiae (fragments)

 The Shield of Heracles (480 lines)

 The Marriage of Ceyx (fragments)

 The Great Eoiae (fragments)

 The Melampodia (fragments)

 Aegimius (fragments)

 Fragments of Unknown Position

 Doubtful Fragments

 Works Attributed to Homer The Homeric Hymns

 I. To Dionysus (21 lines)

 II. To Demeter (495 lines)

 III. To Apollo (546 lines)

 IV. To Hermes (582 lines)

 V. To Aphrodite (293 lines)

 VI. To Aphrodite (21 lines)

 VII. To Dionysus (59 lines)

 VIII. To Ares (17 lines)

 IX. To Artemis (9 lines)

 X. To Aphrodite (6 lines)

 XI. To Athena (5 lines)

 XII. To Hera (5 lines)

 XIII. To Demeter (3 lines)

 XIV. To the Mother of the Gods (6 lines)

 XV. To Heracles the Lion-Hearted (9 lines)

 XVI. To Asclepius (5 lines)

 XVII. To the Dioscuri (5 lines)

 XVIII. To Hermes (12 lines)

 XIX. To Pan (49 lines)

 XX. To Hephaestus (8 lines)

 XXI. To Apollo (5 lines)

 XXII. To Poseidon (7 lines)

 XXIII. To the Son of Cronos, Most High (4 lines)

 XXIV. To Hestia (5 lines)

 XXV. To the Muses and Apollo (7 lines)

 XXVI. To Dionysus (13 lines)

 XXVII. To Artemis (22 lines)

 XXVIII. To Athena (18 lines)

 XXIX. To Hestia (13 lines)

 XXX. To Earth the Mother of All (19 lines)

 XXXI. To Helios (20 lines)

 XXXII. To Selene (20 lines)

 XXXIII. To the Dioscuri (19 lines)

 Homer's Epigrams

 Fragments of the Epic Cycle

 The War of the Titans (fragments)

 The Story of Oedipus (fragments)

 The Thebaid (fragments)

 The Epigoni (fragments)

 The Cypria (fragments)

 The Aethiopis (fragments)

 The Little Iliad (fragments)

 The Sack of Ilium (fragments)

 The Returns (fragments)

 The Telegony (fragments)

 Non-Cyclic Poems Attributed to Homer

 The Expedition of Amphiaraus (fragments)

 The Taking of Oechalia (fragments)

 The Phocais (fragments)

 The Margites (fragments)

 The Cercopes (fragments)

 The Battle of Frogs and Mice (303 lines)

 Of the Origin of Homer and Hesiod, and of their Contest (aka The Contest of Homer and Hesiod)

I. To Dionysus (21 lines) 1

((LACUNA))

(ll. 1-9) For some say, at Dracanum; and some, on windy Icarus; and some, in Naxos, O Heaven-born, Insewn 2 ; and others by the deep-eddying river Alpheus that pregnant Semele bare you to Zeus the thunder-lover. And others yet, lord, say you were born in Thebes; but all these lie. The Father of men and gods gave you birth remote from men and secretly from white-armed Hera. There is a certain Nysa, a mountain most high and richly grown with woods, far off in Phoenice, near the streams of Aegyptus.

((LACUNA))

(ll. 10-12) ' . . . and men will lay up for her 3 many offerings in her shrines. And as these things are three 4 , so shall mortals ever sacrifice perfect hecatombs to you at your feasts each three years.'

(ll. 13-16) The Son of Cronos spoke and nodded with his dark brows. And the divine locks of the king flowed forward from his immortal head, and he made great Olympus reel. So spake wise Zeus and ordained it with a nod.

(ll. 17-21) Be favourable, O Insewn, Inspirer of frenzied women! we singers sing of you as we begin and as we end a strain, and none forgetting you may call holy song to mind. And so, farewell, Dionysus, Insewn, with your mother Semele whom men call Thyone.

1 ll. 1-9 are preserved by Diodorus Siculus iii. 66. 3; ll. 10-21 are extant only in M.

2 Dionysus, after his untimely birth from Semele, was sewn into the thigh of Zeus.

3 sc. Semele. Zeus is here speaking.

4 The reference is apparently to something in the body of the hymn, now lost.