Performances of Greek epics customarily began with a hymn to a
god or goddess--as Hesiod's "Theogony" and "Works and Days" do. A
collection of thirty-three such poems has come down to us from
antiquity under the title "Hymns of Homer." This new Loeb Classical
Library volume contains, in addition to the Hymns, fragments of
five comic poems that were connected with Homer's name in or just
after the Classical period (but are not today believed to be by the
author of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"). Here too is a collection
of ancient accounts of the poet's life.
The Hymns range widely in length: two are over 500 lines long;
several run only a half dozen lines. Among the longest are the hymn
To Demeter, which tells the foundational story of the Eleusinian
Mysteries; and To Hermes, distinctive in being amusing. The comic
poems gathered as Homeric Apocrypha include "Margites," the "Battle
of Frogs and Mice," and, for the first time in English, a fragment
of a perhaps earlier poem of the same type called "Battle of the
Weasel and the Mice." The edition of "Lives of Homer" contains "The
Contest of Homer and Hesiod" and nine other biographical accounts,
translated into English for the first time.
Martin West's faithful and pleasing translations are fully
annotated; his freshly edited texts offer new solutions to a number
of textual puzzles.
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