Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 151-201

hAp 151-201. The narrator describes the gathering of the Ionians on Delos: their wrestling, dancing, and singing delights Apollo and any onlooker, as well as the amazing group of Delian maidens, who hymn gods and men. They praise the blind bard of Chios as the best of all time.

Apollo travels to Delos playing the phorminx, and then to Olympus, where the Muses hymn the gods' immortal gifts and mortal sufferings, while goddesses dance.

1) The gathering of the Ionians delights Apollo (149-50):

οἱ δέ σε πυγμαχίῃ τε καὶ ὀρχηθμῷ καὶ ἀοιδῇ 
μνησάμενοι τέρπουσιν ὅταν στήσωνται ἀγῶνα.

Reminds me of the Achaean paean in Il. 1 (470-4):

κοῦροι μὲν κρητῆρας ἐπεστέψαντο ποτοῖο, 
νώμησαν δ' ἄρα πᾶσιν ἐπαρξάμενοι δεπάεσσιν· 
οἳ δὲ πανημέριοι μολπῇ θεὸν ἱλάσκοντο 
καλὸν ἀείδοντες παιήονα κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν 
μέλποντες ἑκάεργον· ὃ δὲ φρένα τέρπετ' ἀκούων. 

Apollo is consistently characterized as enjoying song in his honor -- presumably why people sing to him. 

2) Lots of metapoetic stuff in this passage, and of course some of the best archaic evidence for the performance of epic. I find it all a little cryptic and daunting to draw any real conclusions from -- I'm not even convinced that a) the blind bard is the same as our narrator or that b) this is the song that was performed at the Ionian gathering. In fact, the praise for Miletus (180: καὶ Μίλητον ἔχεις ἔναλον πόλιν ἱμερόεσσαν) makes me wonder if it was performed there.

3) A couple details did stand out to me on this reading:
  • I think the hymn consistently draws a distinction between dancing and singing. The two are listed as separate things that please Apollo in that line above, along with wrestling, clearly a separate item (πυγμαχίῃ τε καὶ ὀρχηθμῷ καὶ ἀοιδῇ). The Delian maidens sing (υμνεω, αειδω, φθεγγω), but are not said to dance. Their divine counterparts, the Muses, also sing (υμνεω), while other female divinities are said to dance (ορχεομαι). I don't think then we have something like a chorus from Alcman -- this seems like a different, non-choral kind of performance
  • The Delian maidens hymn Apollo, Leto, and Artemis, and then ancient men and women. The women are surprising to me -- maybe something like the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women is meant? or Od. 11? Richardson compares the ends of hymns 31 and 32, but those refer to men.

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