The Homeric Hymns and Demeter’s Sorrow
If we can call the Iliad ‘The Wrath of Achilles’, we could likewise call the most outstanding homeric hymn ‘The Sorrow of Demeter’.
The Homeric Hymns are called that way because they belong to the same tradition that produced Homer, and also because they were falsely attributed to the legendary bard. The Muses, rather than being mere myth, were a living force inspiring these itinerant rhapsodes, who competed in poetry contests and were blessed with sweet heaven-sent eloquence. Hesiod himself tells us in Works & Days of a contest he won in honour of Amphidamas. In fact, I encourage anyone to read the Hymns, Hesiodic, and Homeric works alongside each other.
If we were to truly choose a winner of these contests, I would give my laurel to the teller of the Hymn to Demeter. The story goes like this: Demeter’s daughter Persephone was having a time in the flowery meadows, in the company of other deities. But then, the earth opened up below her, and she was abducted by her uncle Hades, the Receiver of Many, King of the Underworld. Goddess Hekate came to Demeter, Bringer of Seasons, to warn her and lead her to god Sun, Helios, the watcher, who told everything.
Completely outraged at the immortals and at Zeus for permitting such violence, she descended onto the mortal world in awful grief, disguised as an old woman, though everyone could tell she was not ordinary. She offered herself to raise the son of one of the local rulers; the family was in awe when Demeter revealed her true nature. She promised generous things to the baby and asked for a shrine in her honour.
But with Demeter absent from Olympus and her grief not subsiding, the fields and ploughlands were becoming desolate. Famine and chaos threatened the mortals, and they would soon stop worshipping the Olympians. So the gods came up with an accord: Persephone would spend only one third of the year in the Underworld. That’s the awful story about how Persephone became Hades’ wife.
While there are other fascinating hymns, such as the tale of Aphrodite giving birth to Aeneas and the hymn about Apollo’s birth in rocky Delos, this one stands out. Another curious fact: one of the hymns provides a source for the claim that Homer was blind and lived in Chios, but the Homeric question is a talk for another day.
