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Divine and Human in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite

Seth. L Schein

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Schein Seth. L. Divine and Human in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. In: Hymnes de la Grèce antique : approches
littéraires et historiques. Actes du colloque international de Lyon, 19-21 juin 2008. Lyon : Maison de l'Orient et de la
Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, 2013. pp. 295-312. (Collection de la Maison de l'Orient méditerranéen ancien. Série
littéraire et philosophique, 50);

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 Divine and Human
in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite

Seth L. Schein
University of California-Davis

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite is the only surviving example of archaic Greek
epic in which divinity and humanity are co-equal poetic themes.1 The Iliad and
Odyssey and, in a different way, the Works and Days are concerned mainly with the
human, mortal condition. The Theogony and the other major Homeric hymns, though
they “reinterpre[t] traditional myths in order to create a set of symbols which give
meaning to life as experienced by the poet and his age,”2 are fundamentally about the
gods and the genesis of the Olympian or cosmic order; human beings are significant
only insofar as their existence and activities are part of or follow from this order.
Only the Hymn to Aphrodite, in celebrating the “works of the golden [goddess]”
(ἔργα πολυχρύσου Ἀφροδίτης) – not, like the other Homeric hymns, the divinity
herself – focuses equally on the divine order and the human condition.
This double focus correlates with the observation by many scholars that the Hymn
to Aphrodite is not “religious poetry” in any ordinary sense of the term. Its light,
often humorous seduction-narrative and lack of a cultic dimension and of any formal
prayer to the goddess combine to make it less “hymnal” and more “epic” than the
other major Homeric hymns. Jenny Strauss Clay notes these and other differences
from the Homeric Hymns to Demeter, Apollo, and Hermes. She observes that the
Hymn to Aphrodite mentions neither the goddess’ birth nor the establishment of her

1. This paper was first presented in June, 2008, at the Ancient Greek Hymns conference in Lyon,
orga­nized by R. Bouchon, P. Brillet-Dubois, and N. Le Meur-Weissman, then in revised form
at UCLA, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, the University of Oregon, and the
University of Wisconsin, Madison. I am grateful to those present on all these occasions,
especially A. Bergren, S. Drummond, L. McClure, and W.G. Thalmann, for helpful comments,
questions, and suggestions. I also would like to thank P. Brillet-Dubois, N. Felson, S. Nooter,
L. Reitzammer, and especially M.S. Mirto for their encouragement and thoughtful responses to
several earlier drafts.
2. Brown 1953, p. 35.

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 296 s.l. schein

place on Olympus, and that in fact it features her “defeat” or “at least… a partial
diminution of [her] power.”3
Such a diminution of power can also be seen in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, but
there it occurs in a positive context as the poem looks forward to the “sacred service”
(δρησμοσύνην ἱερῶν) and “beautiful rites” (ὄργια καλά) of the Eleusinian mys­
teries (476). The Hymn to Demeter ends on the far side of sorrow with the welcoming
of Demeter and Persephone into the Olympian gathering (ὁμήγυριν, 484), the
statement that the two goddesses sit “august and respected beside Zeus who rejoices
in the thunder­bolt” (παραὶ Διὶ τερπικεραύνωι, / σεμναί τ’ αἰδοῖαί τε, 485-486),
and the assertion that “he is prosperous and happy, whomever / of men on earth those
[goddesses] love and look out for” (μέγ’ ὄλβιος, ὅν τιν’ ἐκεῖναι / προφρονέως
φίλῶνται ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων, 486-487).
All this is quite different from the Hymn to Aphrodite, where the goddess begins
her long, final speech by telling Anchises that she will bear him a son “named
Aineias, because a dire grief took hold of me, because I fell into the bed of a mortal
man” (Αἰνείας ὄνομ’ ἔσσεται, οὕνεκα μ’ αἰνὸν / ἔσχεν ἄχος, ἕνεκα βροτοῦ
ἀνέρος ἔμπεσον εὐνῆι, 198-199).4 Aphrodite ends by warning Anchises never to
boast of having slept with her; otherwise, “Zeus will become angry and hit you with
a smoking thunderbolt. (…) Restrain yourself, do not name me, but have regard for
the wrath of the gods” (Ζεύς σε χολωσάμενος βαλέει ψολόεντι κεραυνῶι (…)
ἴσχεο, μηδ’ ὀνόμαινε, θεῶν δ’ ἐποπίζεο μῆνιν, 288-290). This ending is ominous
and would be all the more so, if we assume that the poet and his audience knew of
the tradition, alluded to by Sophokles and later mentioned by Hyginus and twice by
Servius, that Anchises was punished – with lameness or blindness, rather than death –
for telling what happened.5 This is quite different from the more upbeat ending of
the Hymn to Demeter (and from the endings of the Hymn to Apollo and Hymn to
Hermes). Certainly the “dire grief ” that Aphrodite feels at having slept with a mortal

3. Clay 1989, p. 154-155. For older scholarship on the hymn’s religiosity or non-religiosity, cf.
p. 152-153.
4. Cf. Il. 13, 481-482: δείδια δ’ αἰνῶς / Αἰνείαν, which also “plays on the name’s folk-
etymology” (cf. Janko 1992, p. 108-109). There may be similar, etymological play on the name
Anchises (Ἀγχίσης) in ἀγχίθεοι (“near to the gods,” 200). Cf. Gambarara 1984, p. 157, n. 3;
Faulkner (ed.) 2008a, p. 261. Gambarara, p. 136, compares Aphrodite’s naming of Aineias to
the naming of Odysseus (Od. 19, 406-409, cf. 1, 62); Smith 1981a, p. 126, n. 82, notes the
similar play on Ἀχιλλεῦ, Ἀχαιῶν, ἄχος, and Ἀχαιούς at Il. 16, 21-22.
5. See Hyginus, Fab. 94; Servius on Aeneid 2, 649 (Anchises was lamed, after Aphrodite
deflected Zeus’ thunderbolt) and Aeneid 1, 617 (Anchises was blinded by Zeus’ thunderbolt);
cf. Sophokles, frg. 373 Radt, 1-3, from Laokoon, the details of which may go back to the Iliou
Persis (Sack of Ilium) attributed to Arctinus: νῦν δ’ ἐν πύλαισιν Αἰνέας ὁ τῆς θεοῦ /
πάρεστ’, ἐπ ὤμων πατέρ’ ἔχων κεραυνίου / νώτου κατάσταζοντα βύσσινον φάρος
(“Now Aineias, the goddess’ son, is present at the gates, carrying on his shoulders his father,
who lets fall a linen robe over his back that had been hit by a thunderbolt” [or, with the variant
reading μοτοῦ in place of νώτου, “his father with his linen robe stained by the lightning”). Cf.
Radt (ed.) 1999, p. 332-333, 755; Lloyd-Jones (ed.) 1996, p. 200-201; Lenz 1975, p. 144-152.

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 divine and human in the homeric hymn to aphrodite 297

and become pregnant with Aineias is an expression of Zeus’ triumph and of her own
defeat and dishonor. Thus the Hymn to Aphrodite neither is celebratory religious
poetry like the other major Homeric hymns, nor does it serve ritual, aetiological, or
theo­lo­gical purposes related to a real or imagined cult.6 As Karl Reinhardt put it, “Der
Aphroditehymnus unterscheidet sich von allen anderen Hymnen zumeist dadurch,
daß seine Absicht (…) nicht sacral, sondern profan ist.”7
Nevertheless, from a different perspective, the Hymn to Aphrodite might well
be called religious poetry, but religious poetry of a special kind, combining two
ways of representing the gods and their relations with human beings. One way is
familiar from Homer’s Iliad, a poem in which the (sometimes comic) representation
of the gods serves mainly to clarify by contrast what it means to be human.8 The
other is known from early Greek hexameter poetry generally, including Homer,
Hesiod, the Homeric hymns, and the fragments of other archaic epics. Like these
poems, the Hymn to Aphrodite has what Barbara Graziosi and Johannes Haubold
have called “the resonance of epic:” that is, its narrative and diction evoke a general
cosmic history known to both poets and audiences.9 This shared familiarity with the
cosmic history enabled the composer of a specific poem to “allude” intertextually
or palimpsestuously to the mythology and even the specific narrative details of
other poems or poetic genres for the sake of meaningful comparison or contrast; to
develop a particular story or characterization at length and idiosyncratically, relying
on audiences’ or readers’ ability to understand any composition in its broader mytho­
lo­gical and poetic context.10
The cosmic history implicit in any specific text extended (and still extends for
us, as readers of the poems) from the origin and ordering of the universe, as told
in Hesiod’s Theogony, through the latest events – latest, that is, in mythological
time – of the Odyssey, the Nostoi, and perhaps even the Telegony. The main theme
of this cosmic history is the development and manifestation of the power of Zeus
and the Olympian order under his leadership, including the permanent and absolute
sepa­ration of gods and mortals. In the Hymn to Aphrodite, Zeus brings about this
separation by appropriating Aphrodite’s power to “throw desire” into gods, humans,
or animals (2, 73, 143) and using it against her (45, 53), an appropriation unique in
extant Greek literature. By telling how she is forced to stop making male gods mate
with mortal women and goddesses with mortal men, the Hymn tells one small part
of the story of Zeus’ increasing authority and of the ordering of the cosmos as we
mortals know it.11

6. See in this volume Faulkner, p. 171-176.

7. Cf. Reinhardt 1961b, p. 507.
8. See Griffin 1980, p. 162, 167-170; Schein 1984, p. 51-56.
9. Graziosi, Haubold 2005.
10. On allusion and intertextuality in early Greek epic, see. e.g. Slatkin 1991; Danek 2002; Tsagalis
2008.
11. Allan 2006.

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 298 s.l. schein

The limitation of Aphrodite’s power by Zeus means the end of the age and race
of heroes, sometimes called ἡμίθεοι or “demigods.” Whether or not the poem is
especially piquant, because the mating of Aphrodite and Anchises is to be understood
as the final such mixed coupling,12 there is no doubt that the end of the age and race
of heroes, implicit in Zeus’ treatment of Aphrodite, is consistent with the story told in
Hesiod, frg. 204, 98-103 M.-W., that Zeus planned the Trojan War
to annihilate now most of the race
of mortal humans, … as a pretext to destroy
the lives of the demigods…, children
of the gods by mortals…,
but that the blessed ones… as before
should have their existence and way of life apart from humans.
Ἤδη δὲ γένος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων
πολλὸν ἀϊστῶσαι…, πρ[ό]φασιν μὲν ὀλέσθαι
ψυχὰς ἡμιθέων…, βροτοῖσι
τέκνα θεῶν…
ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν μάκαρες… ὡς τὸ πάρος περ
χωρὶς ἀπ’ ἀν[θ]ρώπων [βίοτον κα]ὶ ἤθε’ ἔχωσιν.

The story that Aphrodite will be forced to stop making gods and humans mate
with one another also recalls the Hesiodic reference to the end of the race of heroes
in Works and Days 159-173, which speaks of “the divine race of warrior-men, / who
are called demigods” (ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων θεῖον γένος, οἳ καλέονται / ἡμίθεοι,
159-160), who perished in the fighting at Thebes and Troy (161-165), and for whom
“Zeus, son of Kronos, provided a (posthumous) existence and way of life apart
from human beings and made to dwell at the far limit of the earth” (τοῖς δὲ δίχ’
ἀνθρώπων βίοτον καὶ ἤθε’ ὀπάσσας / Ζεὺς Κρονίδης κατένασσε πατὴρ ἐν
πείρασι γαίης, 167-168). The hymn also coheres with the retrospective opening
of Book 12 of the Iliad, which looks back, from a time after the end of the Trojan
War, to the “race of demigod men” (ἡμιθέων γένος ἀνδρῶν, Il. 12, 23) who died
fighting at Troy.13 The reason that Aphrodite will no longer mock the other gods by
boasting that she made them sleep with mortals and have mortal children is that there
will be no such children, though the Hymn does not say so explicitly.14 This change
in the cosmic order is analogous to the changes one finds in the other major Homeric

12. See Clay 1989, p. 166-170, referring to Van der Ben 1981, p. 89, 93; cf. Van der Ben 1986,
p. 30-31. But Thalmann 1991, p. 146, is skeptical of Clay’s claim, and Faulkner 2008b argues
that “the case for the poem narrating the end of unions between gods and mortals” is uncertain
and “has at best been overstated” (p. 16). Cf. Faulkner (ed.) 2008a, p. 3-18.
13. On the ἡμιθέων γένος ἀνδρῶν of Il. 12, 23 and the Hesiodic passages, see Reinhardt 1961a,
p. 267-269; Nagy 1979, p. 159-161, 219-220; Scodel 1982, p. 33-50; Thalmann 1984, p. 102-
106.
14. Cf. Clay 1989, p. 193.

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 divine and human in the homeric hymn to aphrodite 299

hymns, when a god must subordinate his or her power to that of Zeus, in order to
obtain or retain a place among the Olympians.15

If the story of Aphrodite’s seduction of Anchises is a piece of cosmic history with

the kind of resonance found elsewhere in early Greek epic poetry, the comic verve
with which it is narrated recalls the representation of divinity in the Iliad (and, to a
lesser extent, the Odyssey). In these epics the conflicts involving earlier generations
of gods and leading to the established Olympian order, with Zeus as “father of gods
and men,” are a thing of the past. The Titans are bound in Tartaros, the powers and
domains of the individual gods are fixed once and for all, and the cosmic order is
stable. Allusion to these earlier conflicts is rare and mostly for the sake of rhetorical
con­trast to present circumstances or in order to justify some present action. In Book 15
of the Iliad, for example, Poseidon, speaking to Iris, refers to the supposedly equal
division of the cosmos between the three sons of Kronos, when he objects to Zeus’
command that he stop helping the Greek army and return to the sea (15, 187-199).
When Achilles asks his mother, Thetis, to seek Zeus’ support for him, he reminds
her of the time she rescued Zeus, when other, rebellious gods wanted to bind him
(1, 396-406) – one of several occasions on which, as Laura Slatkin has demonstrated,
the poem recalls or alludes to the mythology of Thetis and her former cosmic power,
in order to clarify both its own, distinctive poetic themes and the significance of
Achilles’ mortality for the supreme rule of Zeus.16
Many interactions among the gods in the Iliad have the same kind of comic quality
as the seduction of Anchises in the Hymn to Aphrodite. The quarrel between Zeus
and Hera in Book 1, for example, and the representation of warfare among the gods
in Book 21 are almost burlesque, and illustrate by contrast the seriousness of the
conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon and the fighting between the Greeks
and the Trojans. In these passages and elsewhere in the poem, the Olympian gods
are characterized by what Karl Reinhardt called a “sublime frivolity” (erhabener
Unernst), which, as I have said, serves to clarify the seriousness of what human
beings do and suffer.17 The gods in the Iliad are “blessed” (makares) in their freedom
from the decline and darkness in which everything human must end. Since they are
“unaging and immortal,” they risk nothing essential, and the honor and glory they are
obsessed with winning or losing are not truly significant. In this respect their exis­
tence is light and trivial compared with that of human beings, who seek to make their
lives meaningful by fighting for these rewards until they are finally killed. Despite,
or because of, their perfection, the gods in the Iliad serve mainly as foils to bring out
what one might call the tragedy of the human condition.

15. Cf. Allan 2006, p. 29.

16. Slatkin 1991, esp. p. 18-21, 64-66, 68-70.
17. Reinhardt 1961a, p. 128; Reinhardt 1960, p. 25. Cf. Griffin 1980, p. 199.

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 300 s.l. schein

Up to a point, Aphrodite in the Hymn is like the essentially frivolous divinities of

the Iliad, and her seduction of Anchises resembles in many details Hera’s seduction
of Zeus in Iliad 14. Scholars have compared the two scenes mostly in order to
show that one imitates the other. Since, however, both are traditionally formulaic,
no imitation need be posited.18 In each scene, the goddess’ preparations comically
resemble those of an Iliadic hero readying himself for battle. In the Hymn, Aphrodite
goes to her “fragrant temple” in Paphos to be bathed and anointed by the graces, then
dresses and adorns herself for “action,” just as in Iliad 14, 170-187 Hera goes to her
Olympian dwelling to bathe, dress, and adorn herself. Hera then borrows Aphrodite’s
“embroidered belt of many colors” (κεστὸν ἱμάντα / ποικίλον, Il. 14, 214-215), the
source, Hera says, of the “love and desire with which you conquer / all the immortals
and mortal men” (φιλότητα καὶ ἵμερον ὧι τε σὺ πάντας / δαμνᾶι ἀθανάτους
ἠδὲ θνητοὺς ἀνθρώπους, Il. 14, 198-199). Both Hera in the Iliad and Aphrodite
in the Hymn resemble a warrior putting on his armor in the first stage of what will
become a full-blown, triumphant ἀριστεία.19
The Hymn, however, does not actually show Aphrodite putting on her clothing and
jewelry, like Hera in the Iliadic arming scene. Rather, in a humorous variation on the
con­ven­tio­nal arming motif, once she and Anchises have climbed into bed together, he
first removed the shining adornment from her body,
the pins and twisted bracelets and bud earrings and necklaces;
and he loosened her zônê and took off her shining garments
and put them down on a silver studded chair.
Κόσμον μέν οἱ πρῶτον ἀπὸ χροὸς εἷλε φαεινόν,
πόρπας τε γναμπτάς θ’ ἕλικας κάλυκάς τε καὶ ὅρμους,
λῦσε δέ οἱ ζώνην, ἰδὲ εἵματα σιγαλόεντα
ἔκδυε καὶ κατέθηκεν ἐπὶ θρόνου ἀργυροήλου (162-165).

Not only does the poet of the Hymn reverse the conventional arming motif by men­
tioning the goddess’ clothing and adornment when it is being removed rather than
when she puts it on; he wittily adapts another motif, that of one warrior stripping
another’s corpse, which in the Iliad would signify the defeat and death of the warrior

18. Cf. Clay 1989, p. 171, n. 62, pace Podbielski 1971, p. 36-39; Lenz 1975, p. 118-123; cf.
Reinhardt 1961b, p. 514-515.
19. Cf. Smith 1981a, p. 41; Brillet-Dubois 2011. Reinhardt 1961b, p. 515, notes that both god­
desses triumph through “the revelation of irresistible beauty,” but “was bei Hera Trug ist, ist
bei [Aphrodite] ihr Wesen.” One also might compare the virginal appearance and adorning
of the first woman in Hesiod, Th. 572-584, and the dressing and adorning of Aphrodite by the
Hours in the minor Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (HH 6, 5-12), which leads each of the gods,
when they set eyes on her, to admire her form and “pray to bring her home as his wedded wife”
(HH 6, 15-18). Cf. Loraux 1981, p. 85-87; Bergren 1989, p. 11-14.

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 divine and human in the homeric hymn to aphrodite 301

being stripped and the triumph of the one doing the stripping, to signify precisely the
reverse: the triumph of Aphrodite being undressed over the defeated Anchises.20
In this context, however, the significance of “triumph” and “defeat” is not straight­
forward. Anchises is “defeated” in so far as he is Aphrodite’s victim, after “the
goddess threw sweet desire into his heart, and erôs seized [him]” (θεὰ γλυκὺν
ἵμερον ἔμβαλε θυμῶι.  / Ἀγχίσην δ’ ἔρος εἶλεν, 143-144). Τo that extent she
is “triumphant,” and her triumph is in keeping with the cultural code, familiar to
the poet and his audiences, that affirms the hierarchy in which the divine is opposed
to, and superior to, the human. On the other hand, Anchises is triumphant in so far
as he satisfies his desire by having intercourse immediately with the virgin who
has presented herself to him, without having to wait, as she requests, until they are
married in a ritual that will be “honorable in the eyes of both mortals and the immortal
gods” (139-142). In this way he affirms his masculine superiority in conformity
with a different, equally familiar cultural code by which the male is opposed to,
and superior to, the female.21 The contradiction between Aphrodite’s and Anchises
respective triumphs and defeats is resolved, as it were, in the poem’s narrative by
Zeus’ assertion of his patriarchal power over the younger, subordinate female, which
forces her, though a god, to be sub­jected sexually to the desire of a mortal man and
the authority of her father, that is, to a combination of superior male and superior
divine power.22
The complexity of the Hymn’s distinctive way of privileging the masculine over the
femi­nine in this scene of seduction is evident, when one compares Aphrodite’s sexual
encounter with Anchises and her speech, after he discovers that he has slept with a
goddess, to the sexual encounter of Poseidon with the mortal Tyro and his subsequent
speech to her at Od. 11, 238-252.23 Tyro superficially resembles Aphrodite as a female
“subject of sexual desire in her own right,” since “she desired” (ἠράσσατ’, Od. 11,
238) Enipeus, but “she is not united with the lover of her choice; and in fact she is
deprived of any active role in the sexual encounter when Poseidon puts her to sleep”
(Od. 11, 245).24 Aphrodite, by contrast, maintains her agency, but under Zeus’ com­
pulsion she must seduce Anchises with a complicated and humiliating story that she
has come to be his bride, thus enabling him to play the dominant role of a potential

20. The frequently noted parallels in ancient Mesopotamian texts to the removal of Aphrodite’s
clothing (cf. Faulkner [ed.] 2008a, p. 229) are perhaps less significant than the Hymn’s adap­ta­
tion of a motif traditional in Greek epic.
21. Anchises’ masculinity is also expressed in the description of his bedspread, which consists of
the “skins of bears and deep-roaring lions / which he himself had killed in the high mountains”
(158-159). Hunting involves the domination of nature in a manner analogous to the sexual
domi­nation of a female and is a culturally widespread feature of male coming-of-age rituals.
22. Cf. Stehle 1996, p. 202-203, 207-208.
23. Cf. Faulkner (ed.) 2008a, p. 253-254, who also compares Zeus’ intercourse with Europa and
sub­sequent speech in Moschos, Europa 154-161.
24. Doherty 1995, p. 111.

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 302 s.l. schein

husband, though there really is no question of a marriage. Poseidon, on the other

hand, is a free agent who simply and straightforwardly dominates Tyro and satisfies
his desire. He takes on the appearance of Enipeus, “loosens her virgin zônê,” and has
sex with her in the mouth of the swirling stream, while a great wave “concealed the
god and the mortal woman” (Od. 11, 243-245). Poseidon speaks to Tyro only “when
he had completed his sexual deeds” (ἐπεὶ ῥ’ ἐτέλεσσε θεὸς φιλοτήσια ἔργα,
Od. 11, 246), which he apparently does after he has put her to sleep. In the Hymn,
by contrast, Aphrodite tells her lying tale to Anchises before they go to bed together
and he loosens her zônê (164), and she “pour[s] sweet sleep” over him only after
they have finished making love (170). Poseidon briefly informs Tyro that she will
have twins, since “the matings of the gods are not in vain” (ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἀποφώλιοι
εὐναὶ / ἀθανάτων), tells her to rear them, and sends her home (Od. 11, 249-251).
Aphrodite, however, speaks at length to Anchises about her feelings at having slept
with, and become pregnant by, a mortal (247-255) and gives a detailed account of
how their son will be reared and how he should be known among mortals (256-285).
When Poseidon sends Tyro home, he enjoins silence in much the same language as
Aphrodite uses to Anchises (ἴσχεο μηδ’ ὀνομήνηις, Od.  11, 251 ~ ἴσχεο μηδ’
ὀνόμαινε, HH 5, 290), but Poseidon does not speak out of shame or threaten Tyro, as
Aphrodite speaks to and threatens Anchises. There is no indication that Poseidon has
in any way been defeated at the moment of sexual triumph, as Aphrodite has been,
or that he is in any way humiliated by intercourse with a mortal. Rather, Poseidon’s
speech ends proudly with his self-identification, “I am the earth-shaker Poseidon”
(ἐγώ τοι εἰμι Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων, Od. 11, 252), while Aphrodite’s ends with
a warning to Anchises to “avoid the wrath of the gods” (θεῶν δ’ ἐποπίζεο μῆνιν,
290). All these differences between the sexual encounters of a god and a goddess
with their mortal lovers are grounded in and illustrate the cultural code and social
conventions by which females are sexually subordinate to males.
Even though the story of the seduction of Anchises shows Aphrodite being domi­
nated by Zeus, it also demonstrates her own cosmic power in a distinctively comic
fashion. The poem first suggests this cosmic power in the proem (2-6), where she:
sen[ds] sweet longing upon the gods,
and she subdues the tribes of mortal human beings
and the flying birds and all the wild beasts,
both as many as the mainland and as many as the sea nourishes;
to all the works of well-crowned Cythereia are a concern.
ἥ τε θεοῖσιν ἐπὶ γλυκὺν ἵμερον ὦρσεν
καί τ’ ἐδαμάσσατο φῦλα καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων
οἰωνούς τε διειπετέας καὶ θηρία πάντα,
ἠμὲν ὅσ’ ἤπειρος πολλὰ τρέφει ἠδ’ ὅσα πόντος·
πᾶσιν δ’ ἔργα μέμηλεν ἐϋστεφάνου Κυθερείης.

This passage asserts Aphrodite’s universal power over all living beings, divine and
human, who live on land, in the sea, and in the air. Later in the poem, this power is

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 divine and human in the homeric hymn to aphrodite 303

shown more vividly and specifically, when she walks through the forest of Mt. Ida on
the way to Anchises’ dwelling,
and following her,
fawning, went both grey wolves and fierce-eyed lions,
bears and swift leopards insatiable
for deer. Seeing them she rejoiced inwardly in her heart,
and in their breasts she threw desire, and they all
lay down together in pairs in their shady dwellings.
οἳ δὲ μετ’ αὐτὴν
σαίνοντες πολιοί τε λύκοι χαροποί τε λέοντες
ἄρκτοι παρδάλιές τε θοαὶ προκάδων ἀκόρητοι
ἤϊσαν· ἡ δ’ ὁρόωσα μετὰ φρεσὶ τέρπετο θυμόν,
καὶ τοῖς ἐν στήθεσσι βάλ’ ἵμερον, οἳ δ’ ἅμα πάντες
σύνδυο κοιμήσαντο κατὰ σκιόεντας ἐναύλους (69-74).

This sublime passage recalls the description of Poseidon’s chariot ride over the
sea to Troy in Iliad 13, 18-19 and 27-29, where the quivering mountains and forests,
the gamboling dolphins, and the sea “parting with joy” evoke with true grandeur the
presence and progress of the god.25 But the instinctive coupling of the wild beasts as
Aphrodite passes is comical, as well as a sign of her awesome power.
So, too, in a different register, is the lying tale by which she disarms Anchises’
fears and stimulates his desire, when she tells him how Hermes brought her to be
his “bride” but asks him to hold off from having sex with her until after they are
married. Aphrodite can simply “throw desire” into the breasts of wild animals, who
begin mating as she passes by, but a human target requires a speech of persuasion
and deception, activities conventionally associated with the goddess (e.g. Il. 14, 214-
217; Hesiod, Th. 205-206); thus her seduction of Anchises instantiates her distinctive
power.26 The combination of sublimity and humor in the description of Aphrodite’s
journey and the story she tells Anchises recalls the double perspective in which the
Olympians are represented in the Iliad: on the one hand, as cosmically powerful
and perfect in contrast to tragically limited human beings, on the other as comically
frivolous and lacking in seriousness when compared with humans who strive for
heroic achievement and meaning in their lives.

It is no accident that Aphrodite’s most frequent epithet in the Hymn, when she is
an agent exercising her power of her own volition, is φιλομμειδής, “smile-loving”
or “laughter-loving,” which occurs five times (17, 49, 56, 65, 155). This adjective
describes Aphrodite elsewhere in early Greek epic, when she herself is sexually active
(e.g. Od. 8, 362, where she goes to Cyprus, after she and Ares have been set free by
Hephaistos), or when she acts as a goddess of seduction and love-making (e.g. Il. 3,

25. Cf. Reinhardt 1961b, p. 515.

26. Cf. Bergren 1989, p. 17-25, who discusses the link between erôs and epos.

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 304 s.l. schein

424, where she brings Helen a diphron on which to sit, facing Paris; Il.  14, 211,
where she helps Hera prepare for her seduction of Zeus).27 She is similarly described
as “smiling” or “laughing” elsewhere in Greek poetry, when she is praised for her
desi­ra­bi­lity or her erotic power is invoked – for example in HH 10, 2-3: ἐφ’ ἱμερτῶι
δὲ προσώπωι  / αἰεὶ μειδιάει and Sappho frg. 1, 14: μειδαίσαισ’ ἀθανάτωι
προσώπωι.28 When, in the Hymn, Zeus “hurl[s] sweet desire into her θυμός / to
mingle with a mortal man” (45-46), he does so precisely in order to reduce this power
and her ability to boast of it:
so that laughter-loving Aphrodite among all the gods
might not say boastfully with a sweet smile
both that she had mingled together gods with mortal women,
and they had borne mortal sons to the immortals,
and that she had mingled goddesses with mortal men
μηδ’…
καί ποτ’ ἐπευξαμένη εἴπηι μετὰ πᾶσι θεοῖσιν
ἡδὺ γελοιήσασα φιλομμειδὴς Ἀφροδίτη,
ὥς ῥα θεοὺς συνέμειξε καταθνητῆισι γυναιξίν,
καί τε καταθνητοὺς υἱεῖς τέκον ἀθανάτοισιν,
ὥς τε θεὰς ἀνέμειξε καταθνητοῖς ἀνθρώποις (47-52).

It is significant that Zeus’ purpose is not merely to put an end to Aphrodite’s power
to mingle gods and goddesses with mortals, so that they produce mortal offspring,
but to stop her from boasting about it. Such boasting is, in effect, a reproach to the
divi­nities and publicly dishonors them. When Aphrodite later tells Anchises, “Now
my mouth will no longer open wide to say this out loud / among the immortals” (252-
253), she in effect acknowledges Zeus’ triumph over her, implying that to publicize
her madness in sleeping with a mortal and becoming pregnant would be worse than
the madness itself. Aphrodite ends her final speech by warning Anchises, “If you
speak out and boast with a foolish spirit / that you mingled in love with fair-crowned
Kythereia, / Zeus will become angry and hit you with a smoking thunderbolt” (εἰ δέ
κεν ἐξείπηις καὶ ἐπεύξεαι ἄφρονι θυμῶι / ἐν φιλότητι μιγῆναι ἐϋστεφάνωι
Κυθερείηι, / Ζεύς σε χολωσάμενος βαλέει ψολόεντι κεραυνῶι, 286-288).
That Anchises did not obey her is clear from the very existence of the Hymn, which,
from one perspective, can be seen as saying out loud what the goddess wished to

27. Cf. Boedeker 1974, p. 33-35; Faulkner (ed.) 2008a, p. 92-93.

28. Boedeker 1974, p. 24. Perhaps φιλομμειδής (“laughter-loving”) came to be used of Aphrodite
in erotic contexts, because it was associated acoustically with the homophonous, metrically
iden­ti­cal φιλομμηδής (“genital loving”). Cf. Hesiod’s word-play at Th. 200, when he lists the
epi­thets given by gods and men to Aphrodite: “and genital-loving, because she appeared from
the genitals (of Ouranos)” (ἠδὲ φιλομμηδέα, ὅτι μηδέων ἐξεφαάνθη). West (ed.) 1966,
p. 88, comments on the “corresponsion of sound” and Hesiod’s connection of the two words,
though he accepts Bergk’s emendation φιλομμειδέα (“laughter-loving”) for φιλομμηδέα
(“genital-loving”) in his text.

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 divine and human in the homeric hymn to aphrodite 305

keep secret, in poetry that celebrates not only her “deeds” and cosmic power, but also
the limit put on this power by Zeus, who is even more power­ful.
It is a sign of the poetic sophistication with which the Hymn is composed that
when Aphrodite’s actions are seen as a function of her subordination to Zeus, she
is described as Διὸς θυγάτηρ (“daughter of Zeus”), a formula metrically identical
to φιλομμειδής but suggestive of his rather than her power (81, 107, 191).29 There
is humor in the first two of these three passages: in 81-83 the goddess stands before
Anchises “resembling an un-mastered virgin in form and stature,” so he will not be
afraid of her, and in 107-111 she tells him that she is not a goddess but a mortal
woman, the daughter of renowned Otreus; in both cases, however, while Aphrodite
seems to be in control of the situation, the narrator identifies her to his audience or
reader as Διὸς θυγάτηρ (“daughter of Zeus”), suggesting that she really is not in
control. The deployment of the two metrically identical formulas for Aphrodite,
a striking exception to Milman Parry’s principle of formulaic economy, is a good
example of how, in its poetic wit, the Hymn resembles the Iliad, which likewise calls
the goddess Διὸς θυγάτηρ rather than φιλομμειδής at 14, 194, precisely when the
narrator intro­duces a brief speech in which Aphrodite calls Hera “daughter of great
Kronos” and promises to help her, even as Hera is outwitting her.30
“Laughter-loving” Aphrodite of the Hymn brings gods and mortals together
sexually for her own amusement and as an expression of her own power, but she
differs from the gods of the Iliad in one major respect: they, unlike human beings in
the epic, are free from any long-term or tragic consequences of their actions, beyond
the inevitable deaths of their mortal children, but this is not true of Aphrodite in the
Hymn. Zeus punishes her, stripping her of her power to compel himself and the other
gods to mate with mortals. When she tells Anchises, “I fell into the bed of a mortal
man” (βροτοῦ ἀνέρος ἔμπεσον εὐνῆι, 199) and became pregnant with a mortal
child, the word ἔμπεσον (“I fell,” first-person aorist of ἐμπίπτω) is striking: the
only other example in Homeric epic of this verb used of a living victim is at Il. 4, 107-
108, where the goat struck by Pandaros’ arrow “as it was emerging from the rock (…)
fell (backward) into the rock.”31 I suggest that ἐμπίπτω in 199 has the same negative

29. For Διὸς θυγάτηρ as an epithet of Aphrodite, see Il. 3, 374 = 5, 312; 5, 131 = 5, 820; 14,
193; 14, 224; 21, 416; 23, 185; Od. 8, 308, and HH 3, 195. The formula is used elsewhere of
other daughters of Zeus and regularly implies their subordination to his patriarchal authority:
Athena (Il. 2, 548; 4, 128; 4, 515; Od. 3, 337; 3, 378; 13, 359; 22, 205 = 24, 502); Artemis
(Od. 20, 61); Atê (Il. 19, 91); Persephone (Od. 11, 217); Helen (Od. 4, 227); a Muse (Od. 1,
10; HH 14, 2); Muses (Hesiod, Th. 76). Cf. Boedeker 1974, p. 30-32. In HH 5, where Zeus’
patriarchal authority is a major theme of the poem, Διὸς θυγάτηρ is more than usually pointed
and “marked” in contrast to φιλομμειδής.
30. It is no accident that Aphrodite makes this promise out of respect for Hera as her father’s wife
(Il. 14, 212-213) and as a member of an older generation, who has appealed to her just a few
lines earlier as φίλον τέκος, “dear child” (Il. 14, 190). Cf. Boedeker 1974, p. 37-38.
31. Elsewhere ἐμπίπτω is used of a hostile weapon or other force that falls on a (potential) victim,
of an emotion that falls on or into someone’s “spirit” (θυμός), and of the warning (ἔπος) by

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valence as πίπτω in the Iliad and Odyssey, which is frequently used not only of men
‘falling’ or ‘dying’ in battle,”32 but also of gods who, as Alex Purves has shown, when
they fall, “experience time (…) in a way that is similar to how humans experience
time” and undergo “quasi-deaths,” so that their “immortal status is compromised.”
That is, Aphrodite’s “fall into the bed of a mortal” is a kind of “death” for the potent
figure she was before Zeus’ punishment.33 She realizes that henceforth, as a result of
her terrible, unspeakable blindness and madness, the rest of the gods will no longer
fear her power to make them couple with mortals (249-251), and
my mouth will no longer open wide to mention
this among the immortals, since I was altogether blinded –
rashly, unutterably – and went out of my mind,
and I put a child beneath my zônê, when I slept with a mortal.
Νῦν δὲ δὴ οὐκέτι μοι στόμα χείσεται ἐξονομῆναι
τοῦτο μετ’ ἀθανάτοισιν, ἐπεὶ μάλα πολλὸν ἀάσθην,
σχέτλιον, οὐκ ὀνόμαστον, ἀπεπλάγχθην δὲ νόοιο,
παῖδα δ’ ὑπὸ ζώνηι ἐθέμην βροτῶι εὐνηθεῖσα (252-255).

Aphrodite’s situation is in a way similar to that of Thetis in the Iliad, who com­
plains to Hephaistos at 18, 432-434 that:
out of (all) the other sea-goddesses, Zeus forced me to be subject to a man
(in marriage),]
to Peleus, son of Aiakos, and I endured the bed of a man
very much against my will
Ἐκ μέν μ’ ἀλλάων ἁλιάων ἀνδρὶ δάμασσεν,
Αἰακίδηι Πηλῆϊ, καὶ ἔτλην ἀνέρος εὐνὴν
πολλὰ μάλ’ οὐκ ἐθέλουσα.

Thetis too, in the traditional mythology to which the Iliad several times alludes,
threatened Zeus’ authority – not by mating him with mortal women, but by her power,
if he mated with her, to produce a child who would be mightier than his father and
would overthrow Zeus and take his place as ruler of the cosmos.34 Just as, in the
Iliad, the gods “threw [Thetis] into the bed of a mortal man” (θεοί […] βροτοῦ
ἀνέρος ἔμβαλον εὐνῆι, Il. 18, 84-85) and forced her to suffer as a mother for her

Teiresias and Circe that Odysseus should avoid the “island of Helios who gives delight to
mortals,” which “falls on [Odysseus’] spirit” – i.e. which he remembers – when he hears the
“lowing of the oxen of the Sun in their dwelling / and the bleating of his sheep” (Od. 12, 265-
267). ἐμπίπτω also is used of various items that “fall” into the sea: a rock split by Poseidon’s
trident (Od. 4, 508), the sail and top of the mast of Odysseus’ raft (Od. 5, 318), and a diving
bird (Od. 5, 50). See Cunliffe 1963, s.v. ἐμπίπτω.
32. Cf. LSJ, s.v. πίπτω Β.ΙΙ.1; Cunliffe 1963, s.v. πίπτω 7C.
33. Cf. Purves 2006, p. 179-209 (the words quoted are on p. 206).
34. Cf. Slatkin 1991, p. 69-77.

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 divine and human in the homeric hymn to aphrodite 307

potentially dangerous maternal power,35 so in the Hymn Zeus punishes Aphrodite by

subjecting her to the same kind of erotic mastery that she typically exercises over him
and the other gods. The similarity is marked by Thetis’ description of herself as αἰνὰ
τεκοῦσα (“having given birth horribly,”, Il. 1, 414) and Aphrodite’s statement in the
Hymn that “a horrible grief  took hold of me, because I fell into the bed of a man”
(οὕνεκα μ’ αἰνὸν […]  / ἔσχεν ἄχος, ἕνεκα βροτοῦ ἀνέρος ἔμβαλον εὐνῆι,
198-199).
Aἰνός (“horrible”) is an appropriate word to denote the suffering and grief of
Aphrodite and Thetis in relation to their mortal sons. It is used elsewhere in mother-
child contexts, for example, when Hekabe, after Hektor’s death at the hands of
Achilles, asks rhetorically, “Why do I live now, having suffered horribly, / with you
dead”? (τί νυ βείομαι, αἰνὰ παθοῦσα, / σεῦ ἀποτεθνῶτος; Il. 22, 431-432), and
when Andromache, thinking of the destiny she shares with Hektor and of her own
infant son, recalls how her father reared her at home, “he ill-fated, me horribly-fated”
(δύσμορος αἰνόμορον, Il.  22, 481). Moreover, “horrible” (αἰνός), which occurs
most often in contexts of death or mortal danger,36 is used in three other passages
when a god is (over-)engaged with mortality and its concomitant sufferings: Il.  5,
376-380 and 884-887 and HH 2, 349-355. In Il. 5, 376-380, Aphrodite complains to
her mother, Dione:
The son of Tudeus stabbed me, arrogant Diomedes,
because I was carrying my dear son out of the war,
Aineias, who is much the dearest to me of all.
For it’s no longer a horrible battle of Trojans and Achaians,
But now the Danaans, at least, are fighting with immortals, too.
Οὖτά με Τυδέος υἱὸς, ὑπέρθυμος Διομήδης,
οὕνεκ’ἐγὼ φίολον υἱὸν ὑπεξέφερον ολέμοιο,
Αἰνείαν, ὃς ἐμοὶ πάντων πολὺ φίλτατός ἐστιν.
Οὐ γὰρ ἔτι Τρώων καὶ Ἀχαιῶν φύλοπις αἰνή,
ἀλλ’ ἤδη Δαναοί γε καὶ ἀθανάτοισι μάχονται.

In this passage, Aphrodite’s (over-)engagement with mortality is twofold: she is

wounded by a mortal as she is helping her mortal son. Her complaint evokes from
Dione a long, consolatory speech (Il. 5, 382-415) referring to the “many” Olympian
gods who have suffered at the hands of men, including Ares, Hera, and Hades. But
Dione’s warning that if Diomedes fights someone “better” than Aphrodite, his wife
may lament his death is not borne out.
At Il. 5, 884-887, Ares concludes his indignant complaint to Zeus that he and
Aphrodite have been wounded by Diomedes:
But then, equal to a god, he rushed on me,
but my swift feet bore me away; (if not,) I definitely would be suffering

35. Cf. ibid., p. 84-89.

36. E.g. in the formulas φύλοπις (-ιν) αἰνή (-ήν) and ἐν αἰνῆι (-ῆς) δηιοτῆτι (-τος).

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 308 s.l. schein

evils there for a long time among the horrible piles of corpses,
or, while living, I would be strengthless from blows of bronze.
Αὐτὰρ ἔπειτ’ αὐτῶι μοι ἐπέσσυτο δαίμονι ἶσος·
ἀλλά μ’ ὑπήνεικαν ταχέες πόδες· ἦ τέ κε δηρὸν
αὐτοῦ πήματ’ ἔπασχον ἐν αἰνῆισιν νεκάδεσσιν,
ἤ κε ζὼς ἀμενηνὸς ἔα χαλκοῖο τυπῆισι.

The strangeness of Ares’ description of his near-mortal helplessness can be seen

in the only occurrence of the dative plural of αἰνός in archaic epic poetry; the
unique instance of ὑποφέρω (“bear away”) in archaic epic, and the only occurrence
of its aorist form (ὑπήνεικα) anywhere in surviving Greek literature; the dative
plural νεκάδεσσιν, from νέκας (“pile of corpses”), a word not found elsewhere in
archaic epic, which is more vivid than the usual, metrically equivalent νεκύεσσιν
(“corpses”); and the striking and unparalleled phrase “blows of bronze,” with τυπή
(“blow”) found only here in archaic Greek epic.37
At HH 2, 349-355, Hermes tells Hades that Zeus sent him to bring Persephone
from Erebos to the gods:
so that her mother,
when she sees her, may cease from her anger and horrible wrath
at the immortals; for she intends a great deed,
to destroy the strengthless tribes of earthborn humans,
hiding the seed beneath the earth, and making the honors of the immortals
waste away: she has a horrible anger, and she does not mingle
with the gods...
ὄφρα ἑ μήτηρ
ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ἰδοῦσα χόλου καὶ μήνιος αἰνῆς
ἀθανάτοις λήξειεν· ἐπεὶ μέγα μήδεται ἔργον,
φθεῖσαι φῦλ’ ἀμενηνὰ χαμαιγενέων ἀνθρώπων
σπέρμ’ ὑπὸ γῆς κρύπτουσα, καταφθινύθουσα δὲ τιμὰς
ἀθανάτων. Ἥ δ’ αἰνὸν ἔχει χόλον, οὐδὲ θεοῖσιν
μίσγεται...

In addition to the occurrences of the word αἰνός (“horrible”), it is striking that

these three passages involve gods who have separated themselves from the rest
of the immortals and become implicated in mortal existence (Ares and Aphrodite
in war, Demeter as Demophoön’s nurse in the house of Keleos), and that two of
them include the word ἀμενηνός (“strengthless”, Il. 5, 887, HH 2, 352), the same
word Anchises uses at HH 5, 188, when he beseeches Aphrodite not to leave him
ἀμενηνόν (“strengthless”) among men and “an impotent man” (οὐ βιοθάλμιος
ἀνήρ, 189), which is what happens to mortal men who sleep with goddesses (187-
190). Elsewhere in Homeric poetry, such strengthlessness is typically associated with

37. See Kirk (ed.) 1990, p. 151-152. Kirk notes the “thematic connection” of Il. 5, 885-887 with
Ares’ wish at 15, 115-118 to avenge his dead son Askalaphos, even if this involves being hit by
Zeus’ thunderbolt and “lying together with corpses among the blood and dust” (15, 118).

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 divine and human in the homeric hymn to aphrodite 309

the dead (e.g. Od. 10, 521 and 536; Od. 11, 29 and 49) and thus with the human,
mortal condition, to which Demeter would, in effect, reduce the gods by depriving
them of their honors, and which Ares thinks he would experience “among the dire
corpses,” were he not able to escape Diomedes’ onslaught.38
The similarity between Thetis, “having given birth horribly,” and Aphrodite, with
her “horrible grief,” does not involve their becoming “strengthless,” but each suffers
a blow to her divinity through implication in mortality as the mother of a mortal son.
The main difference is in the consequences for each goddess of her “dire” action and
emotion: Thetis will see her son Achilles die in battle,39 after he realizes the fruit­less­
ness of his extraordinary prowess,40 and she will feel the bitterness of having borne
and raised the best of sons and come to understand the negative quality of her own
fertility:
Ah me, wretched me, unhappy in having borne the best hero
since I gave birth to a son faultless and powerful,
outstanding among heroes, and he shot up like a young tree;
I nurtured him like a plant on the slope of the orchard,
and I sent him forth in the curved ships to Ilion
to fight with the Trojans, but I shall not receive him again
returning home into the house of Peleus.
Ὤ μοι ἐγὼ δειλή, ὤ μοι δυσαριστοτόκεια,
ἥ τ’ ἐπεὶ ἂρ τέκον υἱὸν ἀμύμονά τε κρατερόν τε,
ἔξοχον ἡρώων· ὁ δ’ ἀνέδραμεν ἔρνεϊ ἴσος·
τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ θρέψασα, φυτὸν ὣς γουνῶι ἀλωῆς,
νηυσὶν ἐπιπροέηκα κορώνισιν Ἴλιον εἴσω
Τρωσὶ μαχησόμενον· τὸν δ’ οὐχ ὑποδέξομαι αὖτις
οἴκαδε νοστήσαντα δόμον Πηλήϊον εἴσω (Il. 18, 54-60).

Aphrodite, however, will feel no such fruitlessness, no such negative fertility.

Although she tells Anchises that she will name their son Aineias, “since a dire / grief
(ainon achos) gripped me, because I fell into the bed of a mortal man” (198-199), she
also assures him that he will have a royal lineage:
for you there will be a dear son, who will be king among the Trojans,
and children will be born to children continually
Σοὶ δ’ ἔσται φίλος υἱός, ὃς ἐν Τρώεσσι ἀνάξει
καὶ παῖδες παίδεσσι διαμπερὲς ἐκγεγάονται (196-197).

38. Perhaps Il. 13, 206-207, where Poseidon is angry at the death of his grandson Amphimachos,
who has fallen ἐν αἰνῆι δηιοτῆτι, should count as a fourth example of αἰνός used in a passage
asso­ciated with a god’s (over-)engagement with mortality. Poseidon himself, however, does
not suffer as do Aphrodite, Ares, and Demeter in the other three passages; the passage is less
deve­loped than the other three; and it is spoken by the poem’s implied author, not by the god in
question.
39. Cf. Pindar, Isthm. 8, 37.
40. Cf. Il. 18, 104: ἦμαι (…) ἐτώσιον ἄχθος ἀρούρης.

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 310 s.l. schein

This is a distinctively human triumph made possible by the fertility that is linked
with sexual pleasure as the domain and gift of Aphrodite, “a kind of worthy and
desi­rable compensation for the weakness of humanity definitively separated from
the gods.”41 By contrast, the Iliadic Achilles will have future κλέος ἄφθιτον
(“imperishable glory”), but he will have no long-term human lineage.42
The difference in the destinies of Achilles and Anchises is a function of the generic
diffe­rence between the Iliad and the Hymn to Aphrodite, between an epic whose main
theme is mortal heroism and a narrative praising a divinity for her power and place
in the cosmos. Although the Hymn tells the story of how this power was reduced,
of a development in cosmic history, it does so with a light touch and balances this
reduction at a particular moment in time with an “illustrat[ion]” of the goddess’
“eternal nature and workings.”43 In the words of Howard Porter, “the perfection of
the hymn form is found in the perfect synthesis of the dramatic and the metaphysical,
the temporal and the timeless.”44
In the Iliad, developments in cosmic history, such as Aphrodite being forced to
stop mating gods with humans, are, as I have said, a thing of the past, and the gods
have literally nothing to lose in the long run, if their plans go awry and they are
defeated. They may shed some ichôr or suffer some indignity, but the poem assumes
that there will be no more significant changes in the cosmic order or in the powers
of specific divinities. This makes poetic sense, because the emphasis in the Iliad,
as in the Odyssey, is on mortals, not gods; human beings are the ones who suffer
long-term or permanent consequences of their actions. On the other hand, in Hesiod’s
Theogony and the other major Homeric hymns, gods, not humans, are of primary

41. Brillet-Dubois 2006, p. 75; cf. Càssola (ed.) 1975, p. 230, 233-234. Faulkner 2008b, p. 1-5, 18,
and Faulkner (ed.) 2008a, p. 4-7, unconvincingly revives the argument, originating with
Matthiae 1800, p. 66-67, and most influentially set forth by Reinhardt 1961b, that the focus on
Aineias and his descen­dants in the Hymn has more to do with honor being paid to a family of
Aineiadai living in the Troad at the time the Hymn was composed, than with overcoming the
limits of mortality through sexual reproduction. See also in this volume Faulkner p. 171-176.
Cf. Edwards 1991, p. 299-301.
42. On the contrast between the warrior-heroism of the Iliad as a means of winning “imperishable
glory” and erôs in the Hymn as a means of transcending mortality through sexual reproduction,
see Brillet-Dubois 2001, p. 250-260, esp. p. 258-259; 2011, p. 127-132. It is no accident
that the only close parallel to the phrase παῖδες παίδεσσιν (199) is καὶ παίδων παῖδες
at Il. 20, 308, which occurs precisely when Poseidon tells Hera and Athene that Aineias and
his children’s children are destined to rule the Trojans. Hoekstra 1969, p. 39-40, argues on
histo­rical grounds that the Hymn passage must be an adap­ta­tion of the Iliad passage, but is
refuted by Janko 1982, p. 158. It is likely that both passages use similar formulaic language
reflecting the same traditional motif of Anchises and his son Aineias overcoming the normal
limits of mortality. In the Iliad, this overcoming is associated with Zeus’ wish that the lineage
of Dardanos not perish without seed and his hatred for the lineage of Priam (20, 303-306),
while in the Hymn it is the result of Aphrodite’s liaison with Anchises.
43. Fränkel 1975, p. 248.
44. Cf. Porter 1949, p. 270, quoted by Clay 1989, p. 170, n. 58.

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 divine and human in the homeric hymn to aphrodite 311

poetic importance, and human beings are significant only insofar as their existence
and activities are a function of, or help to represent, divinity and the cosmic order.
In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, both humanity and divinity are of central
poetic importance. Just as Aphrodite will lose her power to compel gods to sleep with
humans and have children with them, so Anchises will suffer from his inability to
keep his afternoon with Aphrodite a secret. From a human perspective, what happens
to him is more moving than what happens to Aphrodite. He does his level best not
to sleep with a goddess, questioning his visitor about her identity and giving in only
when she seduces him by telling him a lie he cannot see through. Anchises’ mortal
help­less­ness is emphasized by the rhetorically striking lines describing their sexual
inter­course: ὃ δ’ ἔπειτα θεῶν ἰότητι καὶ αἴσηι, / ἀθανάτηι παρέλεκτο θεᾶι
βροτός, οὐ σάφα εἰδώς (“He then, by the will of the gods and his portion / lay
beside an immortal goddess, a mortal, not knowing clearly”, 166-167) – where what
is clear is that he has no clue who she is, what he is actually doing, and what his all-
too-human role in the history of the cosmos really is. Yet as the object of Aphrodite’s
desire, Anchises is, in a sense, better off than Ganymede and Tithonos, whose stories
she tells him. In antithetical ways, they both end by losing their humanity, because
of the sexual attention of Zeus and Eos. Anchises, on the other hand, though a
humanly helpless and ignorant victim of Aphrodite, will retain his identity, secure
in the knowledge that his son and his children’s children will rule among the Trojans
(196-197) – a distinctively human triumph over mortality made possible by his sexual
union with Aphrodite and a testimony to her power.45
In the Iliad, the “glorious gifts of golden Aphrodite” (Il. 3, 64) are associated with
Paris, who is fundamentally trivial because, as Hektor says and as Paris’ duel with
Menelaos shows, “there is not strength in your heart and there is not any valor” (οὐκ
ἔστι βίη φρεσὶν οὐδέ τις ἀλκή, Il. 3, 45). In the world of the Iliad, these are what
count, not “the lyre and the gifts of Aphrodite” (κίθαρις τά τε δῶρ’ Ἀφροδίτης,
Il.  3, 54) to which Hektor scornfully refers. In the Hymn to Aphrodite, however,
these are just the qualities that count: it is no accident that when Aphrodite first sees
Aineias, he cuts a distinctly Paris-like figure, “playing the lyre with a piercing sound”
(διαπρύσιον κιθαρίζων, 80), and when they go to bed together to make love, their
union is not a sign of unheroic weakness, like the union of Paris and Helen in Iliad 3,
but an activity which in the world of the Hymn has positive long-term consequences.

45. Brillet-Dubois (personal communication) suggests that Ganymede may seem to have “reached
a state of perfect bliss,” and that “his father’s mourning is adequately compensated by the gift
of the horses, whose graceful beauty turns sorrow into joy” (cf. Il. 5, 265-266). But as Rayor
(ed.) 2004, p. 136, observes, though “[t]he story of Ganymede would seem to be a positive
example,” Ganymede himself “has no choice in the matter (…). Though the exemplum ends
happily (…), Ganymede forever remains the adolescent cupbearer to the gods, never maturing
into an adult man.” Cf. Stehle 1996, p. 206 with n. 52, on Adonis and “other (…) youths who
fail to make the transition to adulthood.” In Iliadic terms, to exchange humanity and mortality
for the ethically trivial status of an immortal god is a loss that no compensation can make good.
Cf. Schein 1984, p. 51, 53.

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 312 s.l. schein

Several scholars, including Gottfried Hermann, Howard Porter, and Karl Reinhardt,
have thought that the Hymn to Aphrodite was composed at roughly the same time
as the Iliad.46 Hermann called it “carmen Homeri nomine dignissimum,” Reinhardt
judged both poems to be by the same poet, and both Reinhardt and Porter empha­
sized that the differences between the two texts are a function of their different genres
rather than of their relative chronology.47 Pascale Brillet-Dubois has inter­preted the
Aphroditean tradition exemplified by the Hymn as a response to the Iliadic one, repre­
senting erôs, rather than “imperishable glory” achieved through heroic warfare, as
the means par excellence by which human beings can transcend their mortality, and
suggested that the same poets could adopt alternately either perspective.48 Recently,
however, Arie Hoekstra and Richard Janko have argued on stylistic grounds that
the Iliad and the Hymn “are not the work of the same poet” and that the Hymn is
post-Homeric and was composed “in the decades before the middle of the seventh
century” (Janko) or “somewhere near the middle or in the latter half ” (Hoekstra);
similarly, Andrew Faulkner and Martin L. West think it dates from “the latter half ” or
“the last third” of the seventh century, respectively.49 Given the Iliadic perspective in
which the Hymn views the contrasting conditions of divinity and mortality, I find the
views of Hermann, Porter, and Reinhardt sympathetic and convincing. The linguistic
and stylistic evidence and methods of analysis on which Hoekstra, Janko, Faulkner,
and West rely do not seem sufficiently refined to enable them to demonstrate that one
of two poems in different genres, both of which are end products of the same oral
poetic tradition, must be later than the other.50 If the Iliad was composed sometime in
the final quarter of the 8th century BC, why should the Hymn not date from the same
period?
In any case, the contrast between the Hymn to Aphrodite and the Iliad, and that
between divinity and humanity in the Hymn, are only part of the story. The Hymn
develops this contrast in the context of the “cosmic history” with which all of early
Greek epic resonates, and goes far beyond the Iliad’s occasional allusions to the
mythological past by making an episode in this cosmic history its main subject. The
distinctive achievement of the Hymn is to combine the divine-human contrast and the
cosmic history in a special kind of religious poetry that is unique in archaic Greek
epic as we know it.

46. Hermann 1806, p. lxxxix-xcv; Porter 1949, p. 250; Porter 1951, p. 34; Reinhardt 1961b, p. 507-
521.
47. Hermann 1806, p. lxxxix; Reinhardt 1961b, p. 513, 521; Porter 1949, p. 271-272. Cf. Groddeck
1786, p. 42 (cited by Podbielski 1971, p. 8), who remarks that the Hymn “ὁμηρικώτατον iure
appellari debeat.”
48. Brillet-Dubois 2001, p. 257-259; 2011, p. 131-132.
49. See Hoekstra 1969, p. 40; Janko 1982, p. 180; Faulkner (ed.) 2008a, p. 49; West (ed.) 2003,
p. 16.
50. Hoekstra 1969, p. 39-48; Janko 1982, p. 151-180; Faulkner (ed.) 2008a, p. 23-47.

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