 So, welcome back to another episode, Dr. Ray, or how are you? I'm doing fine. Thank you for inviting me. This time around, we're going to be speaking about a very fascinating body of work, what are usually termed the Homeric hymns. The Homeric hymns are very interesting in the sense that they're ridden over a very large body of time, right? So I guess my first question is, they can't all have been related or ridden by Homer, could they? Yeah. So, they're Homeric, because they're like Homer's work, in that they're in epic poetry, which is the meter is a dactylic hexameter, so every line in the Homeric hymns is in that same meter of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and Hesiod's Theogony, and Works and Days, so it's the same meter. And they're also oral, like Homer's poems would have been. So they have qualities of orality there too. So they're Homeric in that sense, and they're hymns in that they're celebrations of Greek gods. And some of them are composed from the time of Homer, so mid eighth century BC, and all the way down to second century Hellenistic poetry. So after the death of Alexander the Great, plus one that seems to be quite a bit later in addition to the god Aerys. So the subject matter is whatever best celebrates the attributes or an epiphany of that particular god. So some of them are birth stories, or how they obtain or exercise their power. For example, the hymn to Apollo starts with his birth, the hymn to Demeter is the earliest version of the Demeter and Persephone and Haiti story. It's also one of the most beautiful poems in Greek literature. For me, it was the reason, well, I had two reasons for translating the Homeric hymns. One was that I just love the hymn to Demeter, it's one of my very favorite. And partly because it's the story from the mother's perspective, a mother who would destroy heaven and earth to regain her kidnapped daughter. And when her daughter is finally returned, the gifts that she gives to humans, both physical and spiritual, I mean, that's just so amazing. The other reason, more pedestrian reason I translated the Homeric hymns is because I was teaching mythology as a professor at Grand Valley State University. Every time I would teach mythology, I was using different translations. And then I'd have to explain so much. Well, the Greek actually says, or this is what's really going on. And finally I just decided, oh, I'll just do it myself. So then it was really fun because I had all these students who would ask questions. So I'd try out drafts of my translations and every question they asked, no matter what, I would either incorporate into the translation or put in the notes or introduction. And sometimes there were really good insights that I also included. And then the student's name is in there too. So it was like I was able to test out everything with my classes before it was published. And so that's how I ended up testing it and translating it. But it's just such good stories. And you can't really understand Greek mythology or Greek religion without reading the Homeric hymns. So it's just a really seminal work. The Homeric hymns, like you mentioned, they're not made by Homer, but they're in the same kind of poetic meter. You mentioned Hesiod and his theogony. Hesiod and Homer are doing the same thing you find in these hymns. They're invoking a god to tell a song because music is sacred. And because they're so stretched out in time, what would be some of the occasions that these works would have been performed? They all were performed, and a lot of them probably would be performed in competitions because the Greeks are very competitive. We know about the Olympics, but there were poetry contests, there were dancing contests. There's drama contests. So a lot would have been performed in competitions. And we actually know that because the hymns say so. For example, in number six, a short hymn to Aphrodite, it says, farewell, sweet gentle goddess with dancing eyes. Grant me victory in this contest. Ready my song. And so it's very clear that some of these were in competitions. And so we have four really long ones. And those perhaps also were preludes because people were used to sitting around and listening to long poetry in this oral culture. But they might have been done separately too. And we can picture different possibilities for the big ones, the longer ones. For example, Apollo, because it's his birth story, and specifically talks about Delos, where he was born. It talks about Delphi. And so perhaps it was performed at one or both of those places. So it would have been in more of a sacred context. The hymn to Demeter, perhaps it was performed with something having to do with the Ellusinian Mysteries, which at the end of her hymn, it talks about her giving the gifts of the Ellusinian Mysteries. So those were perhaps in more religious contexts. Aphrodite, the hymn, sounds very much like a song that could have been performed at a banquet. So for example, in the Odyssey, it talks about the bards that sing tales of Troy and other things. And we can picture at a banquet a bard, the Stitcher of Songs, being asked to perform this and singing about the goddess Aphrodite and her powers. Hermes is interesting because based on the subject matter and the humor, and it talks about young men, perhaps it was performed at a symposium where you'd have young men and people singing on the lyre with funny tales. And so when Hermes is talking about inventing the stringed instrument, the lyre from the tortoise shell, perhaps it's a bunch of men hanging out and singing these various songs. And Hermes would be quite appropriate there. So we don't have just like one occasion, just lots of different possibilities, even when they're like funny, like the Homeric hymn to Hermes, where he's a trickster and a thief and a traveler and a boundary crosser. And there's fart jokes in it. And I mean, really, in the Greek, there are fart jokes. So yeah, I love that one. I was actually going to mention that one in contrast to something like him to Demeter, you know, you have this very serious, forlorn, beautiful story with a very clueless patriarch. Zeus is like, I have no idea why she's so angry. Well, you just gave her daughter up. You know, in a way, that one kind of reminds me of a Cupid and Psyche from Appalachus' Golden Ass. There's the same kind of concept of a mother and a daughter coming to terms and in a world of arranged marriages, they are technically being just kidnapped and taken away. When Pades comes up out of the ground, it's terrifying. Oh, yeah. We're Persephone. She's completely freaked out. It's kind of like when Psyche is in the palace that Cupid has her stowed away. And it's the same thing. Like when he comes to her at night, she's terrified. So I just think of it from the perspective of like a young woman. You know, who's obviously personified in Koray, Persephone, the girl and the mother. And then processing this very insane system where basically one day your daughter is just given away and taken away. And you have like him for with Hermes. And I almost look at that one as like an proto kind of infancy gospel. If you've ever read the infancy gospel of Thomas, baby Jesus doing the same kind of things. He's very petulant and a trickster. And you know, if Hermes like doing the same things as a baby, and it makes it more ridiculous because I'm imagining, you know, this isn't like a grown up Hermes. Right. This is a baby Hermes saying you're doing all this, stealing these cattle. I was going over it and it was just like, yeah, there's the fart jokes. And then there's the buddy comedy at the end, the team up. Hermes really is in a way of playing both sides. He feigns ignorance with Apollo. But when his mom is confronting him about stuff, he's like, why are you talking to me like I'm a baby? Why are you talking to me like I'm a kid? Like, I know I'm getting us out of here. But when Apollo comes, he's like, I'm just a baby. I don't even know what cows are. I don't know cattle. So the hymn to demeanor, as I mentioned, is one of my all time favorites in Greek literature. But what you had mentioned about the arranged marriage and the kidnap and all of that, let me read you the beginning because I try to be very precise in my language. What does it mean to give away in marriage? What does it mean to kidnap? OK, the Greek has it. I sing of the revered goddess Richard Demeter and her slim ankle daughter, whom Haiti snatched, far seen, thundering Zeus gave her away. So those are just the first three lines. And in that, we have that there's a singer. There's the goddess that the song is being sung about. There's epithets, right, about the goddess. And these are signs of oral poetry where you have Richard Demeter, right, slim ankle daughter. So those are little descriptive things about the gods and goddesses. Just like in Homeric epic with swift footed Achilles, that kind of thing. But it says, whom Haiti snatched. And the Greek word there is harposto, where we get harpies. Right. It's snatching. There is nothing. Oh, he's marrying her. He's wooing her. It's courtship. It's even marriage. He snatches her like in the claws of the harpy. But it says far seen, thundering Zeus gave her away. The Greek word dido me for give. He gave her away in marriage. So Zeus agreed to this match and he gave her to Hades. Didn't bother telling the mother or the daughter. And then Hades opens up the earth and grabs her. So the gender and specifics here are really important. And the language about Demeter is all in terms of flowers. She's called the blossoming girl who is picking flowers when she was snatched. And so it's like the flower who's picking flowers is plucked. And so there's that imagery in it. And you mentioned how horrible it is for her because it says snatching the unwilling girl. Hades carried her off in his golden chariot as she cried and screamed aloud, calling to her father, son of Kronos, highest and best. So obviously a little irony here. She's screaming for her father to help her who gave her away. But this is not a gentle thing. Right. And when we see Demeter next, we have the mountain peaks and sea depths echoed with her eternal cry and her goddess mother heard her. Sharp grief seized her heart with both hands. She tore the veil from her ambrosial hair through a black cloak over her shoulders and sped like a bird over the nourishing land and sea searching. But none of the immortal gods or mortal folk would tell her the truth. And so we have this like hugely powerful story of this mother searching the earth, trying to figure out what happened to her daughter, who she heard scream before she disappeared. When I read that, that's actually a line that I highlighted with both hands. She tore the veil for her ambrosial hair. It really emphasizes that for lack of a better term, she's freaking out. She does. Oh, yeah, these are goddesses and gods. And even in these texts, like later when she meets the daughters, they're like, well, human beings have things to suffer that gods don't have to. But Demeter is obviously suffering the same thing that a mortal woman would go through, you know, sped like a bird frantically racing. It was like getting punched in the gut when I read that. I love the role that Hecate plays in this. Yes. She's like almost offering moral supports. Yeah, she is. She's the female companion who gives support to the mourning mother. And I like that you mentioned the human realm, because what this story has that none of the later stories about Demeter and Persephone and Hades have is there's this whole center part of the hymn that directly focuses on human life. So this royal family takes her in and she tries to make the queen's son, the infant boy, her own. And then when the mother sees her putting the baby into the fire, as she's trying to make him immortal and screams, I mean, what mother wouldn't. Right. She took on this nanny with no references. And then she sees her putting her baby in the fire and Demeter's reaction is as a goddess. It's like, you stupid human beings, didn't you know, you know, then she causes the suffering on earth. But I think it's her time with human beings that allows her at the end when she regains her daughter to not just give back fertility and life on earth, right? Since she's the grain goddess. But she also then gives the Ellucinian mysteries because I think it was her time with human beings where she was this is important and there's mothers too. And they took her in. So she gives something that gives them a hope of a happier afterlife. So she takes care of them with food when they're above and Persephone is queen of the underworld when they're below. But she gives them this blessing. And I think it's because of her time. Getting back to your point about how the subject matter of the poem for him, too, it almost seems to be doing two different things. It's the story of a mother who's going through this crisis over losing her daughter. But it's also about the establishment of the Ellucinian mysteries. Right. So there's kind of like a conflict there. And that's what I find most Homeric about this poem in particular, because it kind of goes back to what Homer does in his own work. Homer has a story on the face of it just about war, right? Macho guys with sex slaves who were arguing with each other about stuff. But like at the same time, Homer's putting in very existential, emotional pathos and depth into his work with these traditional materials. And I see the same thing going on with this him and especially comes out in your translation, Demeter acts how a goddess would act when her honor has been affronted, when the mother's like freaked out that her kids in the fire. But at the same time, there's this very beautiful scene when Persephone is finally allowed to go meet her mother and she gets out of Haiti's chariot and her mother sees her and you writes, I quote, when Persephone saw her mother's lovely eyes, she leapt down from the chariot and ran flinging her arms around her mother's neck, still holding her daughter Demeter once suspect some trick. Her heart feared terribly. It shows that these two are missing each other on a very visceral level. Yeah, they run and hug each other and hold. And the mother is like, wait, did you eat something in the underworld? And Persephone's, he shoved it in my mouth. It was by force, you know? So it's just full of human feeling. And of course, you know, who writes these? Of course, it's humans. So of course, the gods are in our image, right? And this combination of the mysteries and the gifts that Demeter gives and the story. And as you put it at the beginning, the story about the patriarchy, where it's a male world and Demeter has to do what she can to assert her rights and her power. You know, hey, I'm the grain goddess. I'm going on strike. I'm not going to provide any life until you give me what I want. But then the strike doesn't continue. She doesn't try to change the power structure or the patriarchy. She goes, OK, I've got my daughter back. And now I will return fertility to the earth. And in addition, I will give this extra blessing. Right, of the Ellusinian Mysteries in honor of my daughter and me. And my time with the humans. And so it's very much a story of life and community. And that's what I see is so powerful when I talk to you before about Sappho. And here again with the hymn to Demeter is the emphasis is so much on life and joy and community. I can see maybe not Sappho, but somebody like Sappho composing this hymn. It's just strangely enough, I look at it and there's no way that they're putting this in for no reason. Oh, yeah, obviously they have a traditional story to tell. But there's a reason why they're putting in these emotional moments, these moments of despair, of joy. Like you say, we all make the gods in our image just as much as, you know, the other way around. I just see a very interesting person writing this. I know. Well, we can assume that in general, the bards were male and that it would have been something passed down from father to son. And, you know, all of this, some people have argued that the hymn to Demeter was composed by a woman. And because they're all anonymous and we don't know who wrote them, who composed them originally, I mean, it's certainly possible. And Anne Sutter makes a good argument. Other people have as well that because this focuses so much from Demeter's perspective. That that's possible. And of course, no way knowing. I almost see it as like, I don't know if you're familiar with the original Carter family, but Sarah Carter, who was basically I would argue the brains behind all those songs. And AP bought the songs from people in the countryside, the folk songs that became those songs. But Sarah still had to create those songs at the end of the day with her guitar and her voice. So it's the same kind of thing here. So, Diane, thank you so much once again for joining us. I'd like to end with what's the end of most of the Homeric hymns because they do have this ritual pattern. I will remember you and the rest of the song. Thank you.