Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 502-546

hAp 502-546 (end of the hymn). The Cretans land the ship and follow Apollo's orders: build an altar, sacrifice, eat dinner, and follow Apollo to the temple at Delphi while singing the paean. Once they arrive, the Cretan's leader asks, "What will we eat? We bid you to think about it." Apollo responds that they will sacrifice animals in abundance that the tribes of people bring; a confusing lacuna, something to do with hybris, and someday the Cretans will be bound to foreign leaders. Then farewell, I will sing of you another time.

1) This hymn loves the formula φῦλ' ἀνθρώπων, which occurs 5x here in this relatively short hymn; elsewhere 1x Il., 3x Od., 4x Hes., and 1x elsewhere in hymns. Seems like a funny quirk.

2) Heck of an ending to the hymn -- the lacuna makes Apollo's closing lines tough to interpret, but the prophecy of eventual subjugation seems like a real bummer for the Cretans (who of course didn't want to be there in the first place). This kind of long-scale prophecy for the far future reminds me of Herodotus -- you don't often get prophecies in epic longer than a few years, not generations.

3) the Cretans' complaint to Apollo is pretty direct for a speech to a god, but I guess he's pretty pissed. Too bad Apollo gets the last word of the poem -- I'd like to see his response:

πῶς καὶ νῦν βιόμεσθα; τό σε φράζεσθαι ἄνωγμεν.

I'd be curious to know how many other instances there are of mortals using ἄνωγα to gods.

4) When the Cretans land their boats, much of the language is an exact match for when the Achaeans land their boat returning Chryseis to Chryses and sacrificing to Apollo in Il. 1 . A lot of the language is generic boat landing type scene shared with the Od., but some is found only found in these two places. Is it just a generic type scene? Or is it a specific Apolline boat landing type scene? Or is hAp dependent on Il, or the reverse? 

The weirdest bit is ἱστὸν δ' ἱστοδόκῃ πέλασαν προτόνοισιν ὑφέντες, found only at Il. 1.434 = hAp 504. But since the formulas seem to have nothing to do with Apollo, probably best to just take as stock type scene.

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