Author Description

The thirty-three anonymous Homeric Hymns celebrating individual gods are a collection of ancient Greek hymns, "Homeric" in the sense that they employ the same epic meter- dactylic hexameter- as the Iliad and Odyssey, use many similar formulas and are couched in the same dialect. They were uncritically attributed to Homer himself in Antiquity-from the earliest written reference to them, Thucydides (iii.104)-and the label has stuck. "the whole collection, as a collection, is Homeric in the only useful sense that can be put upon the word;" A. W. Verrall noted in 1894, "that is to say, it has come down labeled as 'Homer' from the earliest times of Greek book-literature." The oldest of the Hymns were written in the seventh century BCE, somewhat later than Hesiod and the usually accepted date for the writing down of the Homeric epics. This still places the older Homeric hymns among the oldest monuments of Greek literature; but although most of them were composed in the seventh and sixth centuries, a few may be Hellenistic, and the Hymn to Ares might be a late pagan work, inserted when it was observed that a hymn to Ares was lacking. Walter Burkert has suggested that the Hymn to Apollo, attributed by an ancient source to Cynaethus of Chios (a member of the Homeridae), was composed in 522 BCE for performance at the unusual double festival held by Polycrates of Samos to honour Apollo of Delos and of Delphi. (Quote from wikipedia.org) About the Author Aristophanes, son of Philippus, was a Greek Old Comic dramatist. He is also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy. The place and exact date of his birth are unknown, but he was around thirty in the 420s BC when he achieved sudden brilliant success in the Theater of Dionysus with his Banqueters.