Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 114-136

hAp 114-136

[Aphrodite speaking: "I know your language]; a Trojan nurse raised me. But as it is, Hermes snatched me from a dance, where we young women were playing and a limitless group had encircled us. He led me through many fields of beasts and unapportioned, uncultivated land of wild beasts. I don't think my feet touched the ground. He said I would be called Anchises' wife, and bear him glorious children. Then he left to go to the gods' tribes.

So I came to you out of necessity. I beg you, by Zeus and by your good parents (for no bad parents could have created you). Marry me, a virgin inexperienced in love, and show me to your father, mother, and brothers. 

  • I didn't see a lot of parallels after a quick search, but feels like Vergil likely had this passage in mind when constructing the sorta-marriage between Aeneas and Dido; this relationship is likewise a little improper.
  • the opposition between the fields of men and the uncultivated land of wild beasts doesn't feel very Homeric to me; even in similes that emphasize the wildness of animals you typically have a human presence (e.g. Il. 11.474-481, where raw-eating jackals of the mountains eat a deer wounded by an arrow). I think that tamed/untamed opposition a) is appropriate to this hymn, where Aphrodite presents herself as an untamed (ἄδμης) maiden and b) I think is generally more present in the hymns.
  • as Richardson points out, this invented story of Hermes snatching the maiden from a dance  to Artemis resembles Il. 16.179-86, the birth narrative of Eudorus (one of the Myrmidons); there, like here, Hermes sees a woman in a dance for Artemis (hAp 118 ~ Il. 16.183); there, though, he falls in love himself and sleeps with her upstairs (presumably consensually). It comes as a bit of a surprise in this hymn that Hermes reveals that he has snatched her for someone else.
  • Lots of female abduction in early Greek texts. Reminds me a bit of discourse about slaves in non-state societies these days, which I think is leaning in the direction of emphasizing how slaves can become integrated into stateless societies and rise to leadership positions within them (Kaldellis brought this up in a slavery episode and I read something similar in James Scott's Against the Grain). The normative outcome for female abduction in early Greek texts, I believe, is for the abductor to marry the woman and for her to become integrated into the new society (Helen, Persephone, what's imagined here for Aphrodite). Makes the Achaeans' insistence on treating the abducted women at Troy as disrespected slaves seem atypical by comparison.

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