HYMN TO HELIOS

THE resemblance of this and the following hymn is striking. If the two are not the work of a single author, as Gemoll and (less confidently) Baumeister suppose, the writer of one hymn must have taken the other as his model. The description of the bright Sun is closely parallel to that of the Moon, and the language is in several places identical; cf. 10, 13, and see further on 15 f. In both hymns there appears to be a search after recondite mythology (Euryphaessa 2, Pandia xxxii. 15). The concluding formulae of the hymn shew that they were preludes to recitation. There are no distinctive marks of date, except the mention of Selene as winged, in xxxii. 1. This literary conception seems to belong to the decadence of mythology, perhaps not before the Alexandrine period; cf. the winged Dioscuri in xxxiii. 13. The two hymns, though rather turgid in style, are written in the Homeric manner; Baumeister has no reason in attributing them to the Orphic school of Onomacritus, and they have nothing in common with the extant Orphic hymns (viii and ix) to the same deities.

The place of composition cannot be recovered; the cult of Helios was widespread, especially in the Peloponnese, and was of course famous at Rhodes; see Preller-Robert i.^{2} p. 429 f.

*(/hlion: the later form, in Homer, only Od. 8.271. In the hymns also Ἠέλιος is regular. For the invocation to Calliope cf. Alcman fr. 45 (Smyth 18) Μῶσ' ἄγε, Καλλιόπα, θύγατερ Διός,

au)=te, now; the word does not imply other hymns. Baumeister compares Terpander fr. 2 ἀμφί μοι αὖτε ἄναχθ' ἑκαταβόλον κτλ.