Dionysos in The Homeric Hymns PDF

Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui
Dionysos in the Homeric Hymns: the

Olympian Portrait of the God
1 Three Complementary Perspectives of the God

The three Homeric Hymns to Dionysos have received relatively scarce attention, in
comparison to the many monographs and commentaries about the other large
hymns.1 Also, in the field of Dionysian studies there are many scattered references
to each of the hymns, but there has been no attempt to study the three of them
together. However, they constitute one of the first attempts to ‘define Dionysos,’
even within the narrow boundaries of the epic/hymnic genre. This defining
intention, which makes them worthy of our attention in this volume, is clear
above all in their complementariness.
Scholars disagree on whether the collection of Homeric Hymns was formed
randomly, or following purely literary criteria, or religious ones. There is, how-
ever, a general consensus in the distinction of three groups of hymns based on
their dimension: large, medium sized, and short.2 The three hymns to Dionysos
represent the three possible types: H1 was probably very long, H7 medium, H26
short. Correspondingly, the narrative rhythm of H1 is very slow, that of H7 is very
fast, while H26 is extremely compressed. Furthermore, each of them seems to have
an initial position in each of these groups.3 Whatever the possible origin of each
one as prooimia or prayers, the three hymns as we have them seem to be conscious
1 The new collection of studies edited by Faulkner 2011 contains the first major studies of H1
(West 2011) and H7 (Jaillard 2011) in a general volume about the Homeric Hymns. Other specific
studies will be cited in the footnotes. I follow the text and translations of West 2003 (cf. nn. 4 and
20 about the final lines of H1 and H7). The relation between the three hymns, a key point of this
paper, has received no attention (neither in Faulkner 2011b, 201–204, where the relation between
other hymns is considered).
2 Fröhder 1994. Cf. note 8 for the ordination, which may belong to a later stage than the formation
of the collection.
3 West 2003, 21. On the slow speed of H1, cf. Furley 2011, 226, who points out that the description
of Nysa seems to run quite longer than our fragment; cf. Jaillard 2011, 147 on the fast speed of H7,
full of adverbs like τάχα, αὐτίκα, αἶψα, έξαπίνης, in accordance to ‘marvels and phenomena that
conflict with the ordinary rythm of time.’ Besides, the accumulation of participles (in final position
in 14 of the 59 lines of the poem) contributes to the quickness, which Crusius 1889, 198 sees as a
typical feature of Dionysiac poetics, pointing out to parallel passages in Euripides’ Bachhae and
Aristophanes’ Frogs.
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236 Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui
of each other and of their complementariness: in almost symmetrical closing

formulae not shared with any other hymn in the collection, H1 refers to itself as a
‘sacred song’ (ἱερῆς ἀοιδῆς), and H7 to a ‘sweet song’ (γλυκερὴν ἀοιδήν). Indeed
the solemn, Iliadic tone of the preserved parts of H1 is complemented by a quicker
and lighter tone in H7, with tragic irony in the words of the captain (26–31) and
amazing natural prodigies which seem more ‘sweet’ than ‘sacred.’ Perhaps we
could imagine, admittedly without any other proof than mere intuition, a different
initial performance setting for each of the three: a sacred occasion for H1, a
symposium for H7, a scholarly composition by a poet/theologian for H26.4
The three hymns are, therefore, complementary in form within the collection.
This complementariness is even more remarkable regarding their content, a
poetic complementariness that carries also a clear theological intention. It is
patent in the spatial framing of each hymn: the main action of H1 is located in
heavenly Olympus, H7 in the sea, H26 inland in valleys and forests of Nysa. The
different spatial setting is adequate to the theological intention of each poem. In
effect, each hymn sings a different dimension of the god, as shown in the initial
lines, which in epic conventions summarized the content of a poem: we have lost
the beginning of H1, but we can easily guess it referred to Dionysos’ birth; H7
sings his epiphany in the sea, ‘how he appeared in the shore of the barren sea/on
a jutting headland/in the likeness of a youth in the first manhood’; and H26 sings
Dionysos ‘ivy-crowned and roaring,’ the two epithets which are explained at the
end of the hymn. The different beginning corresponds effectively to the different
perspectives of Dionysos: H1 tells how Dionysos is related to the Olympian gods;
H7 to men, both as in collective groups (pirates) and as individuals (helmsman),
and secondarily to animals (lion, bear, dolphins); and H26 to his female escorts.
Correspondingly, there is also a different emphasis in the filiation of Dionysos in
each hymn: H1 says that ‘the father of gods and men gave you birth’ (1.7: with the
striking juxtaposition of the first two words ἔτικτε πατήρ), and Zeus is the main
character of the central myth and the protagonist of the end with his majestic
nod;5 H7, instead, sings ‘of the son of most-glorious Semele’ (7.1), and at the end
4 The myth of Hera’s binding might be related to the Tonea festivals in honor of Hera in Samos
(Wilamowitz 1895, 234–237; West 2001, 3–4), although H1 avoids any local coloring, so we cannot
be sure where it might have been performed for the first time; Ivana Petrovic has suggested a
sympotic performance of H7 in a paper delivered on October 2010 in Cambridge University (I am
grateful to her for allowing me to read it before publication, as well as for her comments on this
paper); although H26 ends up with a cultic prayer, its focus on etymology, as we shall see, seems
scholarly (although this is not incompatible with real cult, as the Orphic Hymns show).
5 The variant in which H1 ends with two lines referring to Semele seems clearly later insertion, cf.
West 2003, 31.

Dionysos in the Homeric Hymns: the Olympian Portrait of the God 237
of the hymn Semele’s maternity is emphasized: ‘to whom mother Semele gave
birth in union of love with Zeus’ (7.55); H26 brings both Zeus and Semele together
in a nice, somewhat artificial, symmetry: ‘the splendid son of Zeus and most-
glorious Semele’ (26.2).6
In short, there are many aspects in which these hymns complement each
other, singing different dimensions of the god. Yet they never contradict each
other, since they sing of the same god, Dionysos, and agree in many aspects. In
fact, as we shall see, these diverse three perspectives conform a consistent por-
trait of the god which results from the combination of all of them. This is not a
modern construct, but the intention of some ancient ‘theologian(s)’ who were
conscious of this complementariness. We must first ask ourselves, who may these
theologians have been, the poets, the collector, or all of them?
2 The Collection and the Hymns

This complementariness of the three hymns to Dionysos in form and content
should be enough basis to admit that the collection is formed according to some
religious criterion of selection of the hymns: in other words, no matter what the
original religious and poetic function of each hymn per se may have been, they
also had a function within the collection of Homeric Hymns which implies that it
had a theological purpose as a corpus and was not a mere compilation of hexa-
metric hymns. There is much discussion, however, about the dating the collec-
tion, and possibilities range from classical times to late antiquity.7 We cannot
discard either that at some later point after the bulk of the collection was formed
the number and ordination of the hymns was rearranged or even that some of the
older poems were modified or some new ones were added. The stages of composi-
tion of each poem, fixation of a definitive version, insertion in a corpus, and
arrangement of the collection until it reached its actual state, may have been
separated by many centuries.8
6 The repetition of Semele’s epithet, ἐρικύδεος, leaves little doubt that H26 wants to refer to H7.
7 Cf. Faulkner 2011a for a status quaestionis and the most reasonable possibilities. The detailed
discussion of Càssola 1975, lvii-lxvi is very valuable.
8 There are two main attempts to find the criterion for the order of the collection. Van der Valk
1976 tries to see several series of deities in ascending order of importance. His effort, however, has
met with little acceptance, since his subjective considerations on what is important or not make
his thesis very suspicious of circularity. Recently Torres Guerra 2003 has proposed another order
based on their form. Hymns with a narrative pars epica would alternate with hymns of a non-
narrative (or mixed) pars epica. He shows that this pattern is so consistent that it cannot be a

Some of the aforementioned elements that show a conscious complementari-

ness of the three hymns (e. g. the initial position of each one in its group, or some
neat textual correspondences like the underlining of the filiation) may spring
from the later stages of the formation of our collection. However, it seems improb-
able to think that the final collector was a poet-theologian so able that he made fit
into each other hymns that were hitherto completely independent. Not only the
Hymns to Dionysos suggest this. As Jenny Strauss Clay has shown in her classical
The Politics of Olympus (without including our hymns in her study), the main
hymns have a very similar theological message. It is clearly not due to the art of a
scholarly collector, but to the common traits of a specific hymnic genre which
made them end up in the same corpus.9 It seems probable that the composers and
performers of each of these hymns were conscious of the existence of other similar
ones when they were composed, just as the Odyssey is conscious of the Iliad and
the Iliad is aware of Odysseus’ nostos. Gap-filling may have been a good reason to
compose a hymn: perhaps Hesiod knew no Hymn to Hekate and therefore decided
to insert his own in the Theogony, and Plato in the Symposium is aware that there
is no Hymn to Eros and therefore each of the characters try to compose one.10 This
complementariness of each new hymn among the already existing ones creates a
certain unity of the final ensemble. The collector, whenever he worked and
however intervening his editorial work may have been, could not have achieved
the theological unity of the collection ex nihilo, but would have followed in any
case the orientation of the hymns themselves. The dating of the collection itself,
therefore, becomes secondary for our purpose, i. e. the theological thinking be-
hind the juxtaposition of different but complementary hymns, which was prob-
ably much earlier, and may be rooted in archaic times.
matter of pure chance. However, he says that since such order is ‘formal,’ not ‘religious,’ it points
to a formation of the collection in Hellenistic or Imperial times, rather than in archaic times as Van
der Valk would have it. The incompatibility between form and content, and the respective
adscription to later or archaic times, seem unnecessary assumptions. Ordination, in any case, is a
secondary issue, since it may come from a much later rearrangement of the collection after it has
been formed. Faulkner (2011a, 180–181) speculates about the longer hymns having already the
actual ordination in Hellenistic times, by comparing them to Callimachus’ collection.
9 Clay 1989. On the Homeric Hymns as a specific genre, cf. Clay 2011. Cf. n. 15 below for a clear
relation of H7 and Hymn 3 to Apollo.
10 Nagy 1979 on mutual shaping of contemporary poetic traditions. Clay 2003, 129–139, analyses
Hesiod’s Hymn to Hekate in a very similar way to her 1989 study of the Homeric Hymns. Pl. Smp.
177a–c: this passage suggests the existence in Plato’s Athens of an idea of hymnic corpus, in
which the absence of Eros was felt strange. Coincidentally or not, in our collection there are no
hymns to Eros or Hekate.

The approximate dating of individual poems is easier to establish: regarding

those to Dionysos, H1 and H7 seem early and close to archaic models, so that the
majority of scholars dates them around 7th/6th centuries.11 Instead, H26, com-
posed around the scholarly aim to explain Dionysos’ two initial epithets κισσο-
κόμης ‘ivy-haired’ and ἐρίβρομος ‘mighty roarer,’ seems to have a later date of
composition, perhaps of Hellenistic times.12 Correspondingly, the principle of
complementing the other hymns works in this later poem even more than in the
other two, and therefore, the Dionysos of H26 is fully consistent with that of the
earlier H1 and H7, as if it filled the thematic gap of the maenadic god. However,
the complementariness of the three hymns shows a clear continuity of the image
of Dionysos along the different stages of their composition and arrangement
within the collection of Homeric Hymns.
Genre evidently plays a fundamental role in this continuity. Epic poetry had
offered since Homer a consistent image of the Olympian gods, and this image
remained stable in imagination and literature until late antiquity.13 The Homeric
Hymns transmit a consistent Olympian image of Dionysos that may have been
completed in some details in the later stages of the formation of the collection,
but that is rooted in its main features in the first stages of the composition of the
earlier poems. We can, therefore, examine the portrait of Dionysos depicted by
the three hymns from the premise that this is the Dionysos that the ‘epic theology’
of the Homeric Hymns constructed in archaic times.
3 Dionysos’ erga and timai

It is well known, since Clay 1989, that the longer, narrative hymns fill the ‘tem-
poral gap’ after the theogonic events narrated by Hesiod and the heroic events
narrated by Homer and other epic poems, which present a perfectly ordered
divine world. That is, they describe the distribution of erga and timai among the
Olympians. Each god acquires his or her own functions and privileges, so to say,
his or her own sphere of influence. The Hymns to Dionysos, although seldom
11 Cf. Càssola 1975 and West 2011 on H1, which he even considers prior to the Iliad. On H7,
although it is ‘undatable’ with certainty (Faulkner 2011a, 14), late archaic time is a cautious
conclusion (Jaillard 2011, 133).
12 I know no attempt of dating H26; cf. n. 32 for another clue pointing to a Hellenistic date.
13 E. g. the famous lines describing Zeus’ nod (H1 D4–6 = Il. 1.528–530) inspired Pheidias’ statue
and the poetic and religious image of Zeus (Plu. Aem. 28.2; Str. 8.3.30; D. Chr. Or. 12.26; cf. Petrovic
2006, 31–32). Christian apologists took those lines as target against which to measure his
scandalous myths: Clem. Al. Prot. 2.33.1–3; Arnob. Nat. 4.21.

analyzed under this light fit completely into this schema:14 in all three of them,
Dionysos departs from a subordinated position, very far from any divine privi-
leges, and ends up obtaining them. In H1, he is born in Nysa, away from the fury
of Hera, and after showing his unique ability to conquer the mind of Hephaestus
(precisely where the ‘legitimately Olympian’ Ares failed), he is accepted by Hera
and in Olympus; in H7 he starts being a prisoner of the pirates and even the
helmsman who suspects he might be a god supposes he would be Zeus, Apollo or
Poseidon; yet he ends up affirming his power among the pirates and revealing his
true identity to the helmsman; and in H26 he starts being a newborn taken care
of, and he ends up leading his former nurses as maenads.
In the three hymns, his personal and functional relations to other gods like
Zeus, Hera, Hephaestus, Ares, and the nymphs, are described with great clarity.
His only appearance outside these three hymns, in Hymn 19 to Pan, which says
that when Pan arrived to Olympus, Dionysos rejoiced particularly, also collabo-
rates to his insertion in the Olympian system by linking him to this admittedly
Dionysian minor god. Conversely, the mention of Apollo in Hymn 7 as a possible
alternative for the identity of the unknown youth mark Dionysos’ particular
sphere of influence in respect to a god with whom he sometimes shares fields like
ephebic appearance and relation with the sea.15
Also his new timai in regard to humans are specified at the end of each hymn.
In H1 a mysterious triple aition accounts for trieteric festivals (D2: ‘and as there
are three… so at triennial festivals people will ever sacrifice perfect hecatombs’).
In H7 the cultic links are more symbolic and hidden. Csapo has suggested that the
dolphins represent the first Dionysiac dance-chorus, which acts as a collective
(the pirates jump to the sea ‘all at the same time,’ πάντες ὁμῶς).16 But on the other
hand, Dionysos’ revelation to the single man who acknowledged his divinity, the
helmsman, has the style of mystic epiphanies, with Dionysos making him πανόλ-
βιον, encouraging him with the exhortation θάρσει, and revealing himself with
14 Clay 1989 surprisingly does not treat H1 or H7, although in Clay 2011, 246 she does acknowl-
edge their pan-Hellenism, which is also recognized by Faulkner 2011a and Jaillard 2011. Also in
Clay 2011, 243 she defines H1 as the reconciliation of craft and inspiration, and of art and desire,
symbolized in the reconciliation of Zeus and Hera via their children.
15 The mention of Apollo seems to betray knowledge of Apollo’s epiphany to sailors (h.Ap. 399–
403, 448–450). In this light, the turning of the pirates into a choir of dolphins is a nice contrast
with the hymn to Apollo, where the god himself turns into a gigantic dolphin. The mentions of Zeus
or Poseidon as other possible identities of the unknown god show that Apollo is already integrated
with the gods of the older generation.
16 Csapo 2003. Calame 2011, 355–356 also remarks the elements of collective music that can be
gathered in H26.

εἶμι δ᾽ ἐγὼ Διόνυσος.17 Dionysos’ protection to one chosen person would account
for the dimension of the god which is open to an individual relationship with him,
as in the Bacchic mysteries. Furthermore, the end of H7 suggests an identification
of the helmsman with the poet (just as when Ovid tells this myth in book 3 of the
Metamorphoses), as if the closure of the poem was the answer of the helmsman to
the god: the root of χάρις is repeated in both Dionysos’ utterance to the helmsman
(κεχαρισμένε) and the salutation of the poet (χαῖρε).18 H26 also makes – probably
imitates – at the end (12–13) a similar double play with χαιρεῖν, both for a
collective of men and for the god: ‘So I salute you (χαῖρε), Dionysos: grant that we
may come again in happiness (χαίροντας).’ Furthermore, in H26 the cultic refer-
ence, hinted at when it is said ‘in the due time, and time after time for many a
year’ is to the yearly festivals of the god, mainly linked to agriculture as corre-
sponds, in fact, to the contents of the hymn. Again, let us note, the hymns do not
overlap, but nicely complement each other: trieteric cult, collective choral
dances, individual mysteries, agricultural yearly festivals are all given a paradig-
matic myth.
4 Panhellenism
When applied to the Homeric Hymns, Panhellenism is a controversial term.
Scholars debate whether it is due to an explicit theological effort to unify the
Greek pantheon, or it is a by-product of the poets’ ability to adapting their songs
to different audiences, a question with which I will deal at the end of this point.
The result is, in any case, that local variants are purposefully left out, or inte-
grated in broader tales. This is the case, with different strategies, of the longer
hymns and also of these three.
In H1 the local tales that situated the birth of Dionysos in some Aegean
islands (Naxos, Icaros, Dracanos), in Thebes and in the river Alpheios are expli-
citly rejected with a very strong ψευδόμενοι (which probably inspired Callima-
chus’ Hymn to Zeus) in favor of the island of Nysa, far away from all men and
gods. Not only is this birth in a foreign land very appropriate for the ‘god who
17 The word πανόλβιον is similar to τρισόλβιε in the Orphic gold leaves from Pelinna (OF 485–
486) as a quasi-technical word for the state of blessedness; for θάρσει in individual epiphanies, cf.
Il. 15.254; 24.171; h.Ven. 193; Mosch. Eur. 154; Isyllus 68; for its use in the mysteries, cf. Joly 1955;
Merkelbach 1988, 52–53. The revelation of divine identity is similar to Il. 24.460; h.Cer. 120, 268;
Emped. 31 B 112.4 D.-K.
18 The salutation χαῖρε, connected with χάρις means both human gratefulness and divine favor.
Cf. Furley/Bremer 2001, I, 61–63, and Garcia 2002.

comes,’ often conceptualized as arriving from abroad. As some scholars have

seen, it also avoids any local appropriation of the place of birth of the god.19 Also
the trieteric cults announced at the end of the hymn are common to many Greek
poleis and not to any one in particular. All this is of course equally valid for H26.
Instead, the pan-Hellenism of H7 has been paid some attention only re-
cently,20 and we can explore further that path here. Instead of rejecting like H1 or
accumulating mentions of different places (as the Hymn to Apollo), it deliberately
avoids any localization of the action. It is an unnamed land where the pirates take
him, and it is in the middle of the sea, far from land. Granted, there is a maritime
dimension of Dionysos which the hymn exploits, since his power becomes greater
as the ship goes deeper into the sea. But in fact there could not be a better place to
symbolize the universality of Dionysos’ relation to men. Panhellenism is achieved
through delocalization.21 Cecilia Nobili has demonstrated the Corinthian connec-
tions of this myth: Dionysos’ appearance was probably was located in Cape
Maltea, the point where Corinthian ships were most careful in their routes to their
western colonies. Kindred tales like Arion’s are clearly of Corinthian origin.22
Nevertheless, in the text as such there is not a single trace of these Corinthian
links. It is reasonable to think that the hymn was purposefully delocalized, in
order to achieve acceptance among a wider Greek audience. Most interesting from
this viewpoint is also the fact that Apollodorus’ and Ovid’s accounts show the
great acceptance of this myth in Athens, since they situate it in the Aegean islands
(precisely those rejected by H1 as birth-places): it may be an Athenian secondary
reception of the hymn, but one cannot discard that these locations were also
known to the poet of the hymn as we have it, and that he chose to ignore them.23
As D. Jaillard says, ‘the hymn is exceptionally (and perhaps intentionally) de-
tached from all local anchorage, whether it be cultic, mythical, or historical.’24
19 Nagy 1990, 43; Stehle 1997, 186–188.

20 Faulkner 2011a, 18–22; Jaillard 2011, 135–136, 144–145.
21 The lack of personal names also contributes to this delocalization. Perhaps the obscure δῖ᾽
ἑκάτωρ of 7.55 was originally a personal name (Kerényi 1951, 268–269 suggests Ikarios; Merkel-
bach 1988, 52 suggests Κατρεύς, and later sources have Akatios [the spouse]). Eden 2003 proposes
an elegant conjecture: δῖε διάκτορ᾽. Besides avoiding a strange personal name the sense of
διάκτορος is adequate for a pilot.
22 Nobili 2009.
23 Apollod. 3.5.3; Ov. Met. 3.597–691. Crusius 1889 made a great effort to relate H7 to Athenian
rituals, but the links he found are too general (cf. Jaillard 2011, 135 n. 5).
24 Jaillard 2011, 136. For the historical detachment, cf. n. 21 on the absence of personal names.
‘Mythical detachment’ means the absence of explicit links to other myths. It may also be caused
by the effect of the company of H1 in the same corpus: Euripides Cyc. 11–12 presents Hera’s rage
against Dionysos as the cause of the kidnapping of Dionysos by the pirates, which is probably a

Also the fact that the pirates are anonymous and Tyrrhenian (emphasized
with enjambment in lines 7–8: ληϊσταὶ προγένοντο θοῶς ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον/
Τυρσηνοί), that is, non-Greeks, plays the same role as the birth in Nysa in H1: it
does not choose any particular Greek people, but one foreign to all of them. There
is a traditional discussion regarding whether these Tyrrhenians were Etruscan or
the Pelasgian inhabitants of Lemnos.25 If, as Nobili has forcefully argued on
different grounds, they are Etruscans, that is, westerners, then when the captain,
unknowingly prophesying, says that the god will go (28–29) to Egypt, Cyprus or to
the Hyperboreans (southerners, easterners and northerners, respectively), it is not
only an attachment to epic tradition to mean ‘very far lands,’ but also a sweeping
mental overview of the whole of the known geography to show Dionysos’ uni-
versal dominion, from Italy to the most remote lands. A similar sweeping geogra-
phy (Italy, Thebes and Eleusis in one breath) shows the universal dominion of
many-named Dionysos’ in the fifth stasimon of Sophocles’ Antigone (1115–1152).
A shared pan-Hellenic orientation through similar strategies in the three
hymns makes inevitable the question of whether this is an explicit theological
aim of the poets, or a secondary consequence of their wish to compose flexible
and adaptable hymns in order to achieve the broadest possible success with the
least effort.26 Both reasons may work together to a certain extent. It would be
misleading, I think, to separate poetic theology from performance. Let us remem-
ber the ψευδόμενοι of H1: the contest between pan-Hellenic and local variants
was not only a matter of poetic competition between bards, but it implied deep
theological consequences – none less than the filiation of the god – and it is
reasonable to believe that the bards fully aware of them. The same can be said of
later, perhaps more bookish stages of collection where the hymns were polished
and compatible and consistent with each other: when making the hymns more
acceptable for a widest possible audience by eliminating local variants, the poet
(s) and collector(s) were at the same time shaping a theology, a discourse about
the god, that did not exist out of these poems and cannot be separated from them
Euripidean recombination of mythical motifs, but we should not discard that H7 avoided that
version of the myth, since Hera’s rage was already appeased in H1, and they seem to avoid
overlapping and repetition.
25 A history of the discussion in Nobili 2009. Cf. also Jaillard 2011, 35.
26 Clay 1989 favours the first option, while Johnston articulates the latter (2002, 111): ‘the poets of
some of the Hymns, including the Hymn to Hermes, composed with the intention of presenting
their songs at several festivals of similar focus; in fact, this presumption helps to explain why
certain Hymns became widely known. Hymns that became widely known, in turn, would have
incidentally contributed to what eventually became a homogenized literary picture of Olympus’
citizens, their roles and relationships.’ None of the essays collected by Faulkner 2011 addresses
directly this fundamental controversy.

as an external idea which they would describe with greater or lesser beauty and
success.
However, the effort of the poets of these hymns goes beyond the mere
transcending of local variants for strategic reasons. Jaillard suggests that the de-
localization of myth in H7, rather than simple pan-Hellenism, has the intention of
creating an ‘elsewhere’ space where the Dionysiac epiphany can be shown in
pure, iconic, abstract terms.27 It is not by chance, in effect, that iconographic
representations of the myth of the pirates/dolphins were extremely popular all
along Antiquity.28 The same iconicity can be found in the solemn arrival of
Dionysos into Olympus told in H1 or his maenadic frenzy in H26. However, though
extremely different images, they are not mutually incompatible, but rather, share
a certain number of fundamental features and ideological lines that show that the
poetic and aesthetic effort of these poems had a much more ambitious aim than
just achieving flexibility for successful re-performing in different places. They
were consciously shaping an Olympian image of the god.
5 A Not-yet-tragic, Epic-hymnic Theology

of the God
The Homeric Hymns transmit a consistent image of Dionysos in three different
dimensions, which has been fundamental for the perception of the god in later
times up to our own days. Yet it is not through these hymns that Dionysos has
been mainly imagined in the literary tradition. It is common knowledge that the
ancient and modern idea of the god is inevitably mediated by Euripides, whose
portrait of Dionysos in the Bacchae influenced the entire Greek world. Perhaps
even before the Bacchae there were other tragedies of Dionysiac plot, above all
Aeschylus’ Bassarae, from which Euripides may have drawn a great part of his
presentation of the god.29 The tragic genre constructed the image of the god with
more power than any other.
However, tragedians did not start ex nihilo, but from a rich array of religious
and literary traditions previous to tragedy, including these and many other
27 Jaillard 2011, 148–149. As Ivana Petrovic reminds me, aristocratic symposium fits well with
this, as it was an institution which was found wherever aristocrats gathered and transcended
local, polis-related institutions. The aristocratic symposia were much the same everywhere in
Archaic Greece.
28 Herter 1980; Csapo 2003; Jaillard 2011, 134–135.
29 Bierl 1991; Segal 1997, 352.

hymns. The Homeric Hymns, at least H1 and H7, are the most important preserved
piece of the scarce archaic textual evidence about Dionysos, and we may take the
main features of the portrait of the god which they present as the most extended
before tragedy: when Aeschylus composed the Bassarae, or Euripides the Bac-
chae, the most authoritative image of the god was mainly that transmitted by our
hymns. It is worth, therefore, looking at the god of the Homeric Hymns as a not-
yet-tragic Dionysos. But of course this portrait is not the only possible one in
archaic Greece. To put a banal example, the bearded Dionysos of many archaic
iconographic representations seems to find no place at all in any of the three
hymns. There were surely also other genealogies and myths about the god sung
in other poems and hymns which presented him under different light.30 There-
fore, it is not only what is said in the Homeric Hymns, but also what is ignored or
discarded, that should attract our attention to see how the epic/hymnic Dionysos
was constructed.
We have already seen how H1 discards explicitly other places of birth spring-
ing from local myths. Similarly, the insistence of the three hymns in his genera-
tion from the union of Zeus and Semele may indicate a rejection of alternative
genealogies which our poems decided to ignore. The Orphic myth, for example,
which makes Dionysos the son of Zeus and Persephone, is an alternative version
(not necessarily more modern, nor local), which would bring with it a very un-
Olympian incest of father and daughter.31 It is not rejected as localism on pan-
Hellenic grounds, since also the Orphic tradition could aspire to that title, but on
aesthetic and theological ones.
However, since the Homeric genealogy postulates Dionysos’ descent from a
god and a mortal, it has serious consequences. Dionysos is in all three hymns
compelled to assert his divinity, which is not immediately recognized. In H1 he is
far from Olympus, rejected by Hera as other mortal sons of Zeus like Heracles: the
poet insists that Zeus gave birth to him, but perhaps the use of the traditional
formula ‘father of gods and men’ (1.7: σὲ δ᾽ ἔτικτε πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε) is not
completely innocent: since Zeus can engender both gods and mortals like Hera-
cles or Sarpedon, it is not yet clear to which category Dionysos belongs. Only at
the end of the hymn will it be absolutely clarified. As A. Bernabé has recently
shown, it is probable that the epithet εἰραφιώτης underlines his sonship of Zeus,32
and it is not casual that H1 begins and ends invoking him with that epithet. Also
the very insistence of H 26.6 (μεταρίθμιος ἀθανάτοισιν, ‘counted among the im-
30 Cf. Furley 2011.

31 Furley 2011, 228.
32 Cf. Bernabé forthcoming: εἰραφιώτης, whatever its etymology, is similar to Tritogeneia for
Athena: it is almost always linked to Zeus’ paternity. In fact both epithets often appear together.

mortals’) is not used for any other god in the Hymns, and suggests that it is not
self-evident.33 Finally, the pattern of stories like Lycurgus’ and Pentheus’ based
on human incapability to recognize his divine nature is slightly modified in
Hymn 7: instead of taking Dionysos for a conflictive priest or soothsayer, the
pirates thought that he was son of ‘Zeus-born kings’ (7.11), i. e. the highest status
among mortals, even compatible with being descendant of Zeus. But they were
mistaken and punished. The imposition of a not self-evident divinity is a perma-
nent feature in these Hymns.
The manifestations of Dionysos’ power are those that we are used to recog-
nize in the Bacchae and later literature, and which were described by Walter F.
Otto in 1933 with supreme vividness. Above all, his way of conquering and
triumphing over both his enemies and followers, contrasted in H1 with Ares’ brute
force, is through mental possession of his victims (or of his followers), in spite of
his apparent initial weakness. Bewilderment, possession and terror are his un-
avoidable effects, with which he dominates Hephaestus, the pirates and the
nymphs. At the same time that he can trap, his loosening, liberating power, is
experienced by Hera, and by the pirates who are unable to tie him with ropes. He
can punish and give happiness, both collectively and individually. His spheres of
influence are clear: wild nature, both mountain and sea, out from the cities, like
the remote Nysa where he is born, ‘far from men.’ Der kommende Gott who is
thought to come to Greece from a foreign land is as present in the Hymns as in the
Bacchae – and in the imagination of 19th century scholars. The style of his
epiphanies, announced by a great silence followed by a terrible noise, is also
typical. The epithets refer to his exuberant power over nature (κισσοκόμης,
πολυστάφυλος), and to the sensorial aspects of the god of wine: sound (ἐρίβρομος
in 26.1, 26.10), odor (26.6, 7.36) and visual prodigies (7.34, 7.46). He has the power
to break boundaries between land and sea, between living nature and dead wood
by making the mast flourish with grapes and crowns; between god, man, and
animal; between nurses and maenads. He can transform totally, and turn the
fierce pirates into dolphins and make the frightened pilot πανόλβιος. Of particular
interest is the element of sexual ambiguity of the ephebic god which the Bacchae
will so powerfully exploit: as Lucia Prauscello has shown, when in the H7
33 The first atestations of the word μεταρίθμιος occur in similar contexts: Apollonius Rhodius
1.205 (‘counted among the heroes’) and in Rhianus fr. 1 Powell (16: ‘counted among the gods’ with
tmesis), referring to a man who forgets that his parents are mortal – critisizing ruler-cult which
deifies mortals. Both poets are known by imitating/renovating archaic epic diction in Hellenistic
times, which supports a similar consideration for H26. If H26 was composed in an atmosphere
favourable to deification of rulers, it would show a continuity of a ‘deification theology’ in favour
of new interests.

Dionysos says ‘men will take care of this,’ the implication is that the helmsman,
at the end the only true follower of Dionysos, is effeminate.34 Also H1 calls him
woman-maddening (γυναιμανής, Paris’ epithet in the Iliad) and H26 presents him
in the company of women, thus contributing to the general portrait of a male god
close to the female world.
All this is wholly consistent with the traditional image of the Olympian god.
There is no place in the Hymns for other chthonic, more sinister or underworldly
aspects of Dionysos. In their theological optimism and epic self-containment,
they also seem to present a milder portrait of some of the most terrible features
with which the Bacchae adorn Dionysos. He does not delight in the eating of raw
food. Even his violent attack to the captain is passed over without any crude
details. Perhaps the choice of the myth of the pirates instead of others was due to
the fact that the transformation of the pirates into dolphins allowed for a much
happier end than other, more savage, Dionysian myths where he kills his ene-
mies. Neither do the sufferings or fear of the young Dionysos which we find in
other texts (e. g. the Lycurgus’ episode, the Zagreus myth)35 appear here. He is
totally calm, sits ‘smiling with dark eyes’ (7.14–15: μειδιάων ἐκάθητο/ὄμμασι
κυανέοισι). Now, it is possible that Euripides in the Bacchae (like Aeschylus in the
Bassarae) takes some features of the god and takes them to hitherto unimagined
extremes looking for tragic effect. However, it is also in consonance with the
general tone of these three poems (and the others in the collection), that the
Hymns mitigate the crudest aspect of the god to make him the majestic image that
is appropriate for the Olympian pantheon where, contrary to Homer, they are fully
decided to insert him.
Scholars, from Cicero to this volume, continue to wonder at the multiplicity
of Dionysos. The hymns, whoever their poets and their collectors were, con-
fronted the same problem: they suppressed some aspects of the gods, generalized
others, and mitigated others. Whatever their primordial purpose may have been,
they thus imposed the Olympian image of the god, and condemned other visions
of the god, either local or non-Olympian (e. g. Orphic), to marginality. But as these
poets should have known, Dionysos breaks any boundaries with which one tries
to close him up. In that sense, Euripides was (consciously?) an instrument of the
god himself: he probably took much in account this all-too-Olympian vision, and
34 Prauscello 2007. Perhaps it could be understood also as a threatening mockery of the scarce
masculinity of Dionysos himself, from the viewpoint of the pirate, similarly to Lycurgus or
Pentheus.
35 I do not think Càssola 1975 is right in taking the Zagreus myth as aition for the trieteric festivals
in H1. It has nothing to do with Hephaistus’ return. As West 2003, 4 says, ‘who wants to find a
three can find it in any myth.’

he surpassed it with a much more influential image of the god that allowed him to
ravel freely in human imaginations up to this day.36
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Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui

Dionysos in the Homeric Hymns: the

1 Three Complementary Perspectives of the God

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of each other and of their complementariness: in almost symmetrical closing

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2 The Collection and the Hymns

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Some of the aforementioned elements that show a conscious complementari-

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The approximate dating of individual poems is easier to establish: regarding

3 Dionysos’ erga and timai

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comes,’ often conceptualized as arriving from abroad. As some scholars have

19 Nagy 1990, 43; Stehle 1997, 186–188.

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5 A Not-yet-tragic, Epic-hymnic Theology

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30 Cf. Furley 2011.

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