User:UndercoverClassicist/Homeric Hymn to Heracles the Lion-Hearted

The Homeric Hymn to Heracles the Lion-Hearted

Content

Ἡρακλέα, Διὸς υἱόν, ἀείσομαι, ὃν μέγ᾽ ἄριστον

γείνατ᾽ ἐπιχθονίων Θήβῃς ἔνι καλλιχόροισιν
Ἀλκμήνη μιχθεῖσα κελαινεφέι Κρονίωνι:
ὃς πρὶν μὲν κατὰ γαῖαν ἀθέσφατον ἠδὲ θάλασσαν
5πλαζόμενος πομπῇσιν ὕπ᾽ Εὐρυσθῆος ἄνακτος
πολλὰ μὲν αὐτὸς ἔρεξεν ἀτάσθαλα, πολλὰ δ᾽ ἀνέτλη:
νῦν δ᾽ ἤδη κατὰ καλὸν ἕδος νιφόεντος Ὀλύμπου
ναίει τερπόμενος καὶ ἔχει καλλίσφυρον Ἥβην.

χαῖρε, ἄναξ, Διὸς υἱέ: δίδου δ᾽ ἀρετήν τε καὶ ὄλβον.

I will sing of Heracles, the son of Zeus and much the mightiest of men on earth. Alcmena bare him in Thebes, the city of lovely dances, when the dark-clouded Son of Cronos had lain with her. Once he used to wander over unmeasured tracts of land and sea at the bidding of King Eurystheus, and himself did many deeds of violence and endured many; but now he lives happily in the glorious home of snowy Olympus, and has neat-ankled Hebe for his wife. Hail, lord, son of Zeus! Give me success and prosperity.

Form and function

Johannes Haubolt has argued, based on the hymn's similar conclusion to that of the Homeric Hymn to Hephaestus (generally regarded as an epilogue), that the Hymn to Heracles was similarly an epilogue in origin.

Reception

The third-century BCE poet Theocritus wrote Idyll XXIV, or Herakliskos ('Little Hercules'), in which he uses allusion to the Homeric Hymn to create what Barbara Hughes Fowler has called "a mixture of the burlesque and archaising". Theocritus echoes the opening of the Homeric Hymn by beginning the poem with "Heracles, a ten-month-old child". The poem goes on to humorously retell the story of the infant Heracles's strangling of the snakes sent by Hera to kill him, including a twin brother of Heracles who kicks away his blanket and tries to flee from the snakes in terror.

Bibliography

• Evelyn-White, Hugh (1920) [1914]. "To Heracles, the Lion-Hearted" . Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica . New Haven: Harvard University Press. p. 439 – via Wikisource.
• Fowler, Barbara Hughes (1989). The Hellenistic Aesthetic. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780299120443.
• Hall, Alexander (2012). 'To the Beguiling Dance of the Gods': Genre and the Short Homeric Hymns (Ph.D). University of Wisconsin–Madison.