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Ancient Greek Cult Hymns: Poets, Performers and Rituals

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Ancient Greek Cult Hymns: Poets, Performers and Rituals Ancient Greek Cult Hymns: Poets, Performers and Rituals by Yuriy Lozynsky A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics University of Toronto © Copyright by Yuriy Lozynsky 2014 ii Ancient Greek Cult Hymns: Poets, Performers and Rituals Yuriy Lozynsky Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics University of Toronto 2014 Abstract This dissertation looks at the interplay between the poetic text and the circumstances of production in the performance of Greek cult hymns. Although it employ the evidence from various genres and performance occasions, including the Homeric, Orphic and dramatic hymns, the primarily focus is those hymns that were composed to accompany religious rituals and are fully integrated into a public cult event. These include the well-known fragmentary lyric works of Archaic and Classical poets such as Alcman and Pindar as well as inscribed hymns. The investigation looks at the groups and individuals involved in the production of cult songs and show how their interests and goals helped shape the performed text. A key premise of the study is that no single function can explain the entire extant corpus of such hymns, but rather, in order to delineate a network of relevant stakeholders, each hymn must be considered in its own particular historical and performative contexts. The principal rhetorical-religious aim of a hymn is to praise a deity in an appropriate manner. One of the greatest challenges for an ancient hymnographer was to balance between this primary goal of a hymn and various other competing functions specific to the occasion. For this to be achieved, the text needed to employ the familiar form and language of Greek hymnodic tradition, allowing it to maintain a feeling of a genuine religious song. Yet this constraint left ample room for the poet to manipulate traditional material and generic forms in a manner that would reflect the interests of mortal stakeholders. It is this iii manipulation of traditional form to accommodate the specific circumstances – particularly the various stakeholders – of the particular hymnodic occasion that is the principal interest of this thesis. iv Acknowledgments Much of the work in this thesis was done while I was funded by the Canadian Federal Government through a doctoral SSHRC grant, and by the University of Toronto. Many people have helped me along the way. My success in completing this project is due above all to Martin Revermann, an inspiring supervisor and model scholar who guided me throughout my graduate career. I have been extremely fortunate in my entirely committee. I wish to express gratitude to Victoria Wohl and Andreas Bendlin, whose feedback and encouragement contributed substantially to my thesis. Some of the main ideas of the thesis were conceived during my seminar year. Eph Lytle’s course introduced me to Greek epigraphy and brought me into contact with the inscribed hymns. And Dimitri Nakassis’ seminar on Greek religion fueled my passion for the subject and made me keenly aware of the importance of ritualized occasion. My interest in the social economics of performance developed while working with Katherin Blouin on professional entertainers. I wish to thank my external reader, Chris Carey, for agreeing to read my thesis, for the insightful comments in his report and above all for the invaluable and enjoyable conversation during the viva. I am grateful to my family and especially Diliana, whose patience, love and kindness made all of this possible. v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ……………………………………………………….............................. 6 Chapter 2: Organization and Stakeholders of a Cult Hymn Performance ……………………... 23 Chapter 3: Traditional Form and Language of the Greek Hymn ………………………………. 52 Chapter 4: The Hymn of Limenios at the Pythais of 128 BCE …............................................... 94 Chapter 5: Hymnographers’ Manipulation of Traditional Form ……………………………... 126 Chapter 6: Deixis and the Contextualization of Ritualized Song …………………………...... 174 Chapter 7: Readings and Writing for the Gods: Cult Hymns in a Song-and-Book Culture .…. 201 Chapter 8: Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………… 238 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………….. 247 Appendix A: ancient Doxography of the hymnos …………………………………………….. 260 Appendix B: text and translation of select cult hymns ……………………………………….. 271 1 Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Hymn-singing in Greek cult In the first book of the Iliad, the god Apollo sends a plague to the Achaean camp, as punishment for their mistreatment of his priest. The disease does not abate until the Greeks return the priest’s captive daughter and give offerings to the god. Among these offerings are not only sacrifices but also songs. the whole day long they sought to appease the god with song, singing the beautiful paean, the sons of the Achaeans, hymning the god who works from afar. (1.472-4) Their purpose is clear – they are offering Apollo a “beautiful” gift in order to appease him. And, the narrator tells us, they are successful: “and his heart was glad, as he heard” (1.474). The Achaeans are responding to a crisis situation in a manner entirely consistent with their cultural norms. A god has been offended and his anger is bringing harm to their community – their temporary community of the military camp. The logical solution is to repair the relationship with the god that has been jeopardized. With instructions from a seer, a solution is found: atone for the crime and offer further gifts to soothe the divine fury. The men are away from home in a foreign country, at war and under threat of annihilation by a deadly disease, but their forms of worship are not limited to such times of crisis. At the end of the Delian portion of the Homeric hymn to Apollo, the singer describes the festive context of his performance: a panegyris in honour of Apollo on the tiny island of his birth, attended by Ionians with their families; they come in ships, wearing long robes, displaying their wealth; they delight the god with athletics, song and dance (147-50). Although it is not mentioned here, the pilgrims no doubt brought rich gifts to sacrifice and dedicate on Delos. The tradition of sending festive embassies to the regional sanctuary on Delos is also well attested in a later period.1 There is a clear analogy between cult songs and other gifts: not unlike sacrifices or other agalmata, the performance of a hymn (or an 1 Dillon 1997: 124ff, Rutherford 2004: 12, and Kowalzig 2007: chapter 2, esp. 118ff 2 athletic display for that matter) is an offering intended to charm the deity and to make him gracious toward the worshippers.2 2 Aims and methods Conceptualized in this way, the hymn fits into the system of charis, whose central role in Greek religion has rightly been stressed in modern scholarship.3 The position of the cult song in a ritual event and the language of favour, gift-giving and pleasure in the hymnic texts both impel us to see this form of utterance as part of an on-going, long-term reciprocal relationship between the mortal and the divine planes. The hymnic performance is at once an instance of gift-giving and an instance of discourse that attempts to establish, maintain, or repair the charis between the community of its singers and the divine addressee.4 Starting from this point, it is possible to analyse the form, language, rhetorical strategies and artistic embellishments of the Greek hymn as all aimed at a unified religious objective: to please a god with appropriate speech and beautiful spectacle and so make him favourable to the worshipping community. And this has been done by a number of scholars in recent decades, most notably by Furley and Bremer, whose collection of Greek hymns provided one of the most important starting points for my own work on the subject.5 To some extent this approach will also be reflected here, especially in the description of traditional hymnic features (chapter 3), but, as the next few paragraphs will make clear, I depart from the perspective of Furley and Bremer in my insistence on the hymn’s ability to undertake several competing goals, as determined by its particular set of circumstances. Does the charis-function fully account for what is found in the extant samples of the Greek hymn? And does its centrality to the nature of the cult song preclude other functions or levels of meaning? Greek religious worship is rarely clearly separable from other facets of society. The 2 Depew (2000) considers the hymn’s self-representation as an agalma, a beautiful, pleasing offering, as one of the defining features of the genre. See also Fantuzzi and Hunt (2004: 363). On hymn as agalma see further Pulleyn 1997: 49ff and Furley 2007: 119-20. On the nature of the charis relationship and role of sacrifice in it see Bremer 1998 passim, Furley 2007: 120, Mikalson 2010: 24-5 and Parker 2011: x. On the comparison between thusia and hymnos (and between agalma and charis), see Depew 2000: 60-5 and n. 29. 3 Day (1994: 57ff), for example, makes a case for understanding charis as the pleasing quality of any agalma and is thus the key to the latter’s function. 4 For the centrality of charis to the generic conception of the Greek hymn, see Race 1982, Furley 1995 and Depew 2000: 60. 5 Furley and Bremer 2001; but also Furley 1993, 1995, 2007 and Bremer 2008; the same basic approach is also shared by Race 1982 and Pulleyn 1997. 3 great Panathenaic procession is a genuine pious ritual, the expression of the city’s dedication to the cult of Athena Polias, but is also a political event, a public display of the city’s harmony and structure to its citizens, and of its wealth and power to the foreign delegates.
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