HYMN TO APHRODITE

Subject.Aphrodite has power over gods and men alike, and over all the birds of the air and the creatures that move on the earth or in the waters. Athene, Artemis, and Hestia alone are free from her influence. But she constrains even Zeus to love mortal maids. He therefore, in his turn, set passion in her heart, so that she might love a man, and might not boast of her conquest over the gods. So she loved Anchises, who tended the flocks on Ida. First she went to Paphos, and adorned herself in her temple; thence she came to Ida, followed by a train of wild animals in whom she inspired passion. The hymn then describes her meeting and union with Anchises, the subsequent revelation to him of her divinity, and her announcement that a son would be born whose name should be Aeneas. She prophesies that this child and his descendants shall sit upon the throne of Ilium. After warning Anchises not to boast of her love, lest Zeus should strike him with a thunderbolt in anger, she departs to heaven.

The myth of Aphrodite and Anchises.The germ of the story handled by the hymn-writer is found in Homer Il. 2.820 Αἰνείας, τὸν ὑπ' Ἀγχίσῃ τέκε δῖ̓ Ἀφροδίτη,

Character of the poem.The hymn has often been compared with the Lay of Demodocus on the love of Ares and Aphrodite (Od. 8.266 f.). There can be no doubt that the author was acquainted with the lay (see notes on 58 f., 234). But the resemblance is confined to language; for the moral tone of the hymn is far higher than that of the Olympian society depicted by Demodocus. Baumeister (p. 250) misunderstands the character of the hymn in remarking that Aphrodite is represented as Vulgivaga, a lascivious goddess who rejoices in the base love with which she inspires the gods. Against this view Gemoll (p. 258) rightly points out that Aphrodite shews shame and modesty. Her passion for Anchises is no wantonness, but has been forced upon her by Zeus. The poet treats the adventure with considerable frankness, indeed, but not without dignity; and the note of humour and raillery, which is sounded in the Odyssean lay and the hymn to Hermes, is entirely absent. The merits of the poem have been perhaps extravagantly lauded by some critics, but have been unfairly depreciated by others. There may be some inelegance (according to modern taste) in repetitions such as that of ἔργον, used five times in 1-16; but these blemishes, which are collected by Suhle,⁷¹ do not justify that scholar's verdict that the writer is a permediocris poeta. It is true that there is little originality in work which follows the Homeric language so closely (see below, p. 198); but credit at least is due to an imitator who has successfully caught the spirit as well as the letter of the old epic. The scene of Aphrodite's progress to Ida (67 f.) is finely picturesque; and the whole poem, in Mr. Murray's words,⁷² 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 poet's conception of Aphrodite is simple. She is mistress over the whole world of animal life (2-6); but the hymn gives no hint of a deity who inspires the whole Cosmosan Aphrodite Urania, by whose agency

ἐρᾷ μὲν ἁγνὸς οὐρανὸς τρῶσαι χθόνα, ἔρως δὲ γαῖαν λαμβάνει γαμοῦ τυχεῖν.

Aesch. fr. 41.

Such an idea of the universal love-goddess doubtless grew up, as Mr. Farnell remarks (p. 699), on eastern soil; but in Greek literature it found no full expression until the time of Attic tragedy (e.g. Eur. fr. 89), and later, of the Orphic hymns (cf. Orph. h. lv. 4).

Date.The date of the hymn, as of the others, is very doubtful. Hermann calls it Homeri nomine dignissimum, and some have even thought it contemporary with the Iliad and Odyssey. Windisch⁷³ thinks it as old as the later parts of the Odyssey; Thiele⁷⁴ assigns it to the time of the Cypria. Others (e.g. Eberhard⁷⁵ ), without urging so early a date, consider the hymn to be the oldest in the collection. On the other hand, Suhle⁷⁶ believes that the author may have been a contemporary of the Pisistratids, or even of Sophocles. This view is extreme; but it will hardly be disputed at the present day that the hymn is later than the earliest parts of the Odyssey. The theory of great antiquity rests mainly on the fact that the hymn is ὁμηρικώτατος in diction. As many as twenty verses are taken from Homer with little or no variation; and the poem abounds in epic hemistiches and formulas. But this only proves that the author was a diligent student of the Homeric poems, while there are a number of words and usages which are not Homeric (a full list is given by Suhle p. 16 f.).

Reminiscences of Hesiod are scattered through the poem (5, 14, 29, 108, 258, etc.). Still more remarkable is the close connexion between this hymn and that to Demeter. The two hymns have, in common, several words, or uses of words, which do not occur elsewhere in extant Greek literature: 31 τιμάοχος (h. Dem. 268), 157 εὔστρωτος (h. Dem. 285), 257 βαθύκολπος, applied to nymphs (h. Dem. 5), 284 καλυκῶπις (h. Dem. 8), which only reappears in the Orphic hymns. Some striking expressions are also confined to the two hymns: 156 κατ' ὄμματα καλὰ βαλοῦσα (h. Dem. 194), 173 μελάθρου κῦρε κάρη (h. Dem. 188). Unfortunately, scholars are not agreed as to the question of borrowing. Some (e.g. Abel) hold that the writer of the hymn was the imitator; Gemoll and others think it scarcely doubtful that the hymn to Aphrodite is the older. The latter view seems the more probable. In that case, it may well be at least as old as the seventh century B.C.

Place of composition.If the date of the poem is uncertain, the place of composition is not less obscure. According to Groddeck, who is followed by various scholars, including Abel and Fick (B. B. ix. p. 200), the hymn is Cyprian. It is pointed out that Aphrodite is called the goddess of Cyprus in 2, 292, and the rare word σατίνας in 13 is supposed to be Cyprian. No argument, however, can be based on the occurrence of the title Κύπρις, which is Homeric, and, like Κυθέρεια, belongs to the common stock of divine epithets (cf. vi. 2 and 18; x. 1 Κυπρογενῆ Κυθέρειαν). The Cyprian origin of σατίνη is also very dubious (see on 13); and in any case a word used by Anacreon and Euripides need not be considered distinctly local, even in early poetry.

Others (Matthiae, O. Mller, etc.) place the home of the author in Asia Minor, and believe the poem to have been recited in honour of a chieftain who claimed descent from Aeneas. But the hymn bears no trace of having been composed for a definite occasion, or in honour of a particular person. The allusion of the revived Trojan kingdom in 196 f. is quite vague, and is merely a reminiscence of the Homeric tradition. Many, without committing themselves to the Trojan theory, believe that the author was an Ionian, or at least lived in Asia Minor. This is as likely as the Cyprian view, and as equally incapable of proof. The myth handled by the poet is not local, but Homeric; the love of Aphrodite and Anchises was famous wherever Homer was known. The language may be very pure Ionicalmost Homeric-Greek, but it does not follow that the composer was an Asiatic, as Prof. Mahaffy argues (Hist. Greek Lit. i. p. 148). At a time when the epics had become the property of the whole Greek-speaking world, the author of such a hymn might have belonged to any branch of the Hellenic stock. The further argument of those who see a contamination of Aphrodite with the Asiatic Cybele is unsound. It is true that Aphrodite was probably, in the Troad, another form of Cybele (Farnell p. 641), and as a nature-goddess had power over all the brute creation; but the hymn-writer is influenced by the Homeric conception of the goddess, and for Homer Aphrodite is far removed from Cybele. As Gemoll observes, the goddess is called a daughter of Zeus, and her train of beasts is a mere imitation of the animals which follow Circe (see on 69).

State of the text.The general unity of the hymn is so obvious that it has suffered little from the higher criticism. The Germans, for the most part, have been content to expunge isolated lines. One passagethe description of the nymphswas suspected by Groddeck and Ilgen (260-274). The lines are perhaps the most interesting in the poem, and there is absolutely no valid ground for denying them a place in the original document. Hermann's theory of a double recension cannot be neglected; but such a recension, if it existed, has left but slight traces; cf. notes on 97 f., 274 f.

*mou=sa/ moi e)/n*nepe: a reminiscence of Od. 1.1 ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα.

3-5. The goddess of love inspires all living things, not only men; cf. Eur. Hipp.447 f.Eur. Hipp., 1269 f., Lucr.i. 1 f.