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144-525: It is disputed when the site of the Telesterion is believed to have been originally built, there is evidence to suggest that the temple was created in the 7th century BCE, historians know however that it was created at least by the time of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (650–550 BCE). The Telesterion had ten different building phases that took place over the course of its creation. It was destroyed by

288-484: A center of learning. Paganism survived in Harran until the 10th century thanks to its practitioners bribing local officials. In 933, however, they were ordered to convert. A visitor to the city in the following year found that there were still pagan religious leaders operating a remaining public temple. Roman religion's characteristic openness has led many, such as Ramsay MacMullen to say that in its process of expansion,

432-408: A co-emperor since 355, ruled solely for 18 months from 361 to 363. He was a nephew of Constantine and received Christian training. After childhood, Julian was educated by Hellenists and became attracted to the teachings of neoplatonists and the old religions. He blamed Constantius for the assassination of Julian's father, brother and other family members, which he personally witnessed being killed by

576-468: A collection of the hymns and considered them Homeric in origin. The first century BCE historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus also quoted from the hymns and referred to them as "Homeric". Diodorus Siculus , another historian writing in the first century BCE, quoted verses of the first Hymn to Dionysus . The Greek philosopher Philodemus , who moved to Italy between around 80 and 70 BCE and died around 40 to 35 BCE, has been suggested as

720-540: A corpus probably dates to this period. They were comparatively neglected during the succeeding Byzantine period (that is, until 1453), but continued to be copied in manuscripts of Homeric poetry; all the surviving manuscripts of the hymns date to the fifteenth century. They were also read and emulated widely in fifteenth-century Italy, and indirectly influenced Sandro Botticelli 's painting The Birth of Venus . The Homeric Hymns were first published in print by Demetrios Chalkokondyles in 1488–1489. George Chapman made

864-403: A deity's iconography and responsibilities, or of aspects of human technology and culture. The hymns have been considered as agalmata , or gifts offered to deities on behalf of a community or social group. In this capacity, Claude Calame has referred to them as "contracts", by which the praise of the deity in the hymn invites reciprocity from that deity in the form of favour or protection for

1008-479: A dotted antisigma (ↄ), evidence of which can be found in surviving manuscripts of the Hymn to Apollo . The grouping of the hymns into their current corpus may date to late antiquity. References to the shorter poems as being within the corpus begin to be found in sources dating from the second and third centuries CE. The assemblage of the thirty-three hymns listed today as "Homeric" dates to no earlier than

1152-501: A few temples and plundered more, converted others to churches, and neglected the rest; he "confiscated temple funds to help finance his own building projects", and he confiscated funds in an effort to establish a stable currency; he was primarily interested in hoards of gold and silver, but he also, on occasion, confiscated temple land; he refused to support pagan beliefs and practices while also speaking out against them; he periodically forbade pagan sacrifices and closed temples, outlawed

1296-524: A general law issued in 458 by the Eastern emperor Leo and the western emperor Majorian , (457 to 461), the temples and other public works gained protection with strict penalties attached. Mob violence was an occasional problem in the independent cities of the empire. Taxes, food and politics were common reasons for rioting. Religion was also a factor though it is difficult to separate from politics since they were intertwined in all aspects of life. In 361,

1440-403: A half later, on 11 May 330, at the festival of Saint Mocius , the dedication was celebrated and commemorated with special coins with Sol Invictus on them. In commemoration, Constantine had a statue of the goddess of fortune Tyche built, as well as a column made of porphyry , at the top of which was a golden statue of Apollo with the face of Constantine looking toward the sun. Libanius

1584-587: A historian contemporary to Constantine, who says he did not, that it was Constantius II who did so instead. According to historian R. Malcolm Errington , in Book 2 of Eusebius' D e vita Constantini , chapter 44, Eusebius explicitly states that Constantine wrote a new law "appointing mainly Christian governors and also a law forbidding any remaining pagan officials from sacrificing in their official capacity". Other significant evidence fails to support Eusebius' claim of an end to sacrifice. Constantine, in his Letter to

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1728-536: A journey reminiscent of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Joyce also drew upon the Hymn to Hermes in the characterisation of both Dedalus and his companion Buck Mulligan . The Cantos by Joyce's friend and mentor Ezra Pound , written between 1915 and 1960, also draw on the Homeric Hymns : Canto I concludes with parts of the hymns to Aphrodite, in both Latin and English. In modern Greek poetry,

1872-472: A living religion; it was defined as a superstitio – an 'outmoded illusion.' Constantine made many derogatory and contemptuous comments relating to the old religion; writing of the "true obstinacy" of the pagans, of their "misguided rites and ceremonial", and of their "temples of lying" contrasted with "the splendours of the home of truth". In a later letter to the King of Persia , Constantine wrote how he shunned

2016-474: A lost one known by the siglum Ψ ( psi ), which probably dates to the twelfth or thirteenth century. This may be a manuscript mentioned in a letter by the humanist Giovanni Aurispa in 1424, which he stated he had acquired in Constantinople; Aurispa's manuscript has also been suggested as being Ω. As of 2016, a total of twenty-nine manuscripts of the hymns are known. Until the later twentieth century,

2160-545: A pagan festival that had already become secular. Julian's preference for blood sacrifice found little support, and the citizens of Antioch accused Julian of "turning the world upside down" by reinstituting it, calling him "slaughterer". Altars used for sacrifice had been routinely smashed by Christians who were deeply offended by the blood of slaughtered victims as they were reminded of their own past sufferings associated with such altars. "When Julian restored altars in Antioch,

2304-465: A persistent anti-pagan policy, and that sacrifices were prohibited in all localities and cities of the empire on penalty of death and confiscation of property. There is no evidence that the harsh penalties of the anti-sacrifice laws were ever enforced. Edward Gibbon's editor J. B. Bury dismisses Constantius’ law against sacrifice as one which could only be observed "here and there", asserting that it could never, realistically, have been enforced within

2448-425: A piece of legislation forbidding anyone from consulting a diviner, astrologer, or a soothsayer; then he listed augurs and seers, Chaldeans, magicians and 'all the rest' who were to be made to be silent because the people called them malefactors. In the fourth century, Augustine labeled old Roman religion and its divinatory practices as magic and therefore illegal. Thereafter, legislation tended to automatically combine

2592-550: A poem composed around 350 CE (possibly by the poet and local politician Andronicus ) in commemoration of the mythical origins of the Egyptian city of Hermopolis Magna . The Homeric Hymns did influence the fourth-century Christian poem The Vision of Dorotheus and a third-century hymn to Jesus transmitted among the Sibylline Oracles . They may also have been a model, alongside the hymns of Callimachus, for

2736-465: A possible originator for the movement of manuscripts of the Homeric Hymns into the Roman world, and consequently for their reception into Latin literature. His own works quoted from the hymns to Demeter and Apollo . In Roman poetry, the opening of Lucretius 's De rerum natura , written around the mid 50s BCE, has correspondences with the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, while Catullus emulated

2880-539: A purge. Opponents' supporters were not slaughtered when Constantine took the capital; their families and court were not killed. There were no pagan martyrs. Laws menaced death, but during Constantine's reign, no one suffered the death penalty for violating anti-pagan laws against sacrifice. "He did not punish pagans for being pagans, or Jews for being Jews, and did not adopt a policy of forced conversion." Pagans remained in important positions at his court. Constantine ruled for 31 years and never outlawed paganism; in

3024-631: A series of four articles in The Journal of Hellenic Studies on textual problems in the Homeric Hymns , which became the basis of the 1904 edition of the hymns he co-produced with Edward Ernest Sikes. In 1912, Allen published an edition of the hymns in the Oxford Classical Texts series. He published an updated version of his 1904 edition in 1936, co-edited with William Reginald Halliday ; Sikes refused to collaborate on it, but remained credited as an editor. The first commentary on

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3168-458: A sharp distinction between oral and written composition, seeing the poems as traditional texts originating in a strongly oral culture. The name "Homeric Hymns" derives from the attribution, in antiquity, of the hymns to Homer , then believed to be the poet of the Iliad and Odyssey . The Hymn to Apollo was attributed to Homer by Pindar and Thucydides , who wrote around the beginning and

3312-463: A single hymn was that of Nicholas Richardson on the Hymn to Demeter in 1974. In his Loeb Classical Library edition of 2003, Martin West rejected the adiaphoroi argument of Gentili, choosing instead to posit a correct reading for each known alternation. Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire began during the reign of Constantine

3456-688: A smoking altar in the Roman Forum and the most severe persecution of Christians in the empire's history, the victorious Constantine I entered Rome and, without offering sacrifice, bypassed the altar. He proceeded to end the exclusion and persecution of Christians, restored confiscated property to the churches, and adopted a policy toward non-Christians of toleration with limits. The Edict of Milan (313) redefined Imperial ideology as one of mutual toleration. Constantine could be seen to embody both Christian and Greco-Roman religious interests. Constantine openly supported Christianity after 324; he destroyed

3600-532: A society that still contained the strong pagan element of Late Antiquity, particularly within the imperial machinery itself. Christians were a minority and paganism was still popular among the population, as well as the elites at the time. The emperor's policies were therefore passively resisted by many governors, magistrates, and even bishops, rendering the anti-pagan laws largely impotent when it came to their application. According to Salzman, Constantius' actions toward paganism were relatively moderate, and this

3744-513: A staff. The Hymn to Apollo makes reference to a chorus of maidens on the island of Delos , the Deliades, who sang hymns to Apollo, Leto and Artemis . References to instruments of the lyre family (known interchangeably as phorminx ) occur throughout the Homeric Hymns and other archaic texts, such as the Iliad and Odyssey . These lyres generally had four strings in the early period of

3888-513: A temple to Venus on the site of the crucifixion of Jesus on Golgotha hill in order to suppress Christian veneration there. Constantine used that to justify the temple's destruction, saying he was simply reclaiming the property. Using the vocabulary of reclamation, Constantine acquired several more sites of Christian significance in the Holy Land. From 313, with the exception of the brief reign of Julian , non-Christians were subject to

4032-412: A threat that barred them from a professional career many of them already held. On his trip through Asia Minor to Antioch to assemble an army and resume war against Persia, he found the cities falling short of pagan revival. His reforms were met by Christian resistance and civic inertia. Provincial priests were replaced with Julian's sympathetic associates, but after passing through Galatia and seeing

4176-613: A variety of hostile and discriminatory imperial laws aimed at suppressing sacrifice and magic and closing any temples that continued their use. The majority of these laws were local, though some were thought to be valid across the whole empire, with some threatening the death penalty , but not resulting in action. None seem to have been effectively applied empire-wide. For example, in 341, Constantine's son Constantius II enacted legislation forbidding pagan sacrifices in Roman Italy . In 356, he issued two more laws forbidding sacrifice and

4320-443: Is attested in the historical and archaeological records until the end of the 4th century. Under Constantine, (and for the first decade or so of the reigns of his sons), most of the temples remained open for the official pagan ceremonies and for the more socially acceptable activities of libation and offering of incense. Despite the polemic of Eusebius claiming Constantine razed all the temples, Constantine's principal contribution to

4464-546: Is probably its defining trait. Yet he goes on to say this did not apply equally to all gods: "Many divinities were brought to Rome and installed as part of the Roman state religion, but a great many more were not". Andreas Bendlin has written on the thesis of polytheistic tolerance and monotheistic intolerance in Antiquity saying that it has long been proven to be incorrect. According to Rodney Stark , since Christians most likely formed only sixteen to seventeen percent of

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4608-478: Is reflected by the fact that it was not until over 20 years after Constantius' death, during the reign of Gratian , that any pagan senators protested their religion's treatment. The emperor Constantius never attempted to disband the various Roman priestly colleges or the Vestal Virgins and never acted against the various pagan schools. He remained pontifex maximus until his death. The temples outside

4752-589: The Altar of Victory from the Senate meeting house. This altar had been installed by Augustus in 29 BC, and since its installation, each Senator had traditionally made a sacrifice upon the altar before entering the Senate house. When Constantius removed the altar he also allowed the statue of Victory to remain, therefore Thompson concludes that the removal of the altar was to avoid having to personally sacrifice when he

4896-492: The Dioscuri and Tyche . According to historian Hans-Ulrich Wiemer  [ de ] , there is good reason to believe the ancestral temples of Helios , Artemis and Aphrodite remained functioning in Constantinople. The Acropolis , with its ancient pagan temples, was left as it was. Using the same vocabulary of restoration he had used for Aelia Capitolina , Constantine acquired sites of Christian significance in

5040-450: The Greek pantheon and retell mythological stories, often involving a deity's birth, their acceptance among the gods on Mount Olympus , or the establishment of their cult . In antiquity, the hymns were generally, though not universally, attributed to the poet Homer : modern scholarship has established that most date to the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, though some are more recent and

5184-417: The Homeric Hymns for his own hymns, and is the earliest-known poet to use them as inspiration for multiple works. The hymns were also used by Theocritus , Callimachus's approximate contemporary, in his Idylls 17 , 22 and 24 , and by the similarly contemporary Apollonius of Rhodes in his Argonautica . The mythographer Apollodorus , who wrote in the second century BCE, may have had access to

5328-829: The Homeric Hymns generally place greater focus on single events than the Homeric epics, and cover a shorter span of time, resulting in what he calls a comparatively "slow" narration. Of Pallas Athena , guardian of the city, I begin to sing. Dread is she, and with Ares she loves deeds of war, the sack of cities and the shouting and the battle. It is she who saves the people as they go out to war and come back. Hail, goddess, and give us good fortune with happiness! —Hymn 11, "To Athena", translated by Hugh Evelyn-White The hymns vary considerably in length, between 3 and 580 surviving lines. They are generally considered to have originally functioned as preludes ( prooimia ) to recitations of longer works, such as epic poems . Many of

5472-460: The Homeric Hymns in his epyllion on the wedding of Peleus and Thetis . Virgil drew upon the Homeric Hymns in his Aeneid , composed between 29 and 19 BCE. The encounter in Book 1 of the Aeneid between Aeneas and his mother Venus references the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite , in which Venus's Greek counterpart seduces Aeneas's father, Anchises . Later in the Aeneid , the account of

5616-505: The Homeric Hymns received relatively little attention from classical scholars or translators. No collation of the hymns' manuscripts was made between that of Chalkokondyles in 1488 and 1749. Joshua Barnes published an edition of the hymns in 1711, which was the first to attempt to explain textual issues by citing parallels in other texts considered to be Homeric. Friedrich August Wolf published two editions, as part of larger editions of Homer, in 1794 and 1807. The first modern edition of

5760-492: The Homeric Hymns , particularly the Hymn to Hermes . The 1889 poem "Demeter and Persephone" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson , reinterprets the narrative of the Hymn to Demeter as an allegory for the coming of Christ . The Hymn to Demeter was particularly influential as one of the few sources, and the earliest source, for the religious rituals known as the Eleusinian Mysteries . It became an important nexus of

5904-521: The Homeric Hymns , particularly the five longer poems. In the second century CE, the Greek-speaking authors Lucian and Aelius Aristides drew on the hymns: Aristides used them in his orations, while Lucian parodied them in his satirical Dialogues of the Gods . In late antiquity (that is, from around the third to the sixth centuries CE), the direct influence of the Homeric Hymns

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6048-502: The Hymn to Aphrodite and the second Hymn to Dionysus . Ovid's account of the abduction of Persephone in his Fasti , written and revised between 2 and around 14 CE, likewise references the Hymn to Demeter . Ovid further makes use of the Hymn to Aphrodite in Heroides 16, in which Paris adapts a section of the hymn to convince Helen of his worthiness for her. The Odes of Ovid's contemporary Horace also make use of

6192-486: The Hymn to Ares was composed considerably later and may date from as late as the fifth century CE. Although the individual hymns can rarely be dated with certainty, the longer poems (Hymns 2–5) are generally considered archaic in date. The earliest of the Homeric Hymns were composed in a time period when oral poetry was common in Greek culture. It is unclear how far the hymns were composed orally, as opposed to with

6336-436: The Iliad and Odyssey , the hymns are composed in the rhythmic form known as dactylic hexameter and make use of formulae : short, set phrases with particular metrical characteristics that could be repeated as a compositional aid. The attribution to Homer was sometimes questioned in antiquity, such as by the rhetorician Athenaeus , who expressed his doubts about it around 200 CE. Other hypotheses in ancient times included

6480-468: The Iliad and Odyssey , the text of the Homeric Hymns was comparatively little edited by the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria. Franco Ferrari  [ it ] has suggested that, throughout antiquity, manuscripts of the text may have circulated which intentionally included two different versions ("doublets") of the same word: Alexandrian scholars developed the practice of marking these with

6624-688: The Persians after the Battle of Thermopylae , when the Athenians withdrew to Salamis in 480 BCE and all of Boeotia and Attica fell to the Persian army, who captured and burnt Athens. After the defeat of the Persians , the Telesterion was intended to be reconstructed by Kimon , but it was instead rebuilt some time later due to Pericles' influence. At some point in the 5th century BCE, Iktinos ,

6768-546: The persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire , when all non-Christian sanctuaries were ordered closed by law initiated by the Christian emperors. However, it was not until the anti-pagan decree of Theodosius in around 390 CE that there was an end to all religious use of the temple. The English renaissance statesman Sir Rowland Hill , who published the Geneva Bible , configured his house at Soulton Hall to evoke

6912-458: The "abominable blood and hateful odors" of pagan sacrifices, and instead worshiped the High God "on bended knee". Church historians writing after his death wrote that Constantine converted to Christianity and was baptised on his deathbed, thereby making him the first Christian emperor. Lenski observes that the myth of Constantine being baptized by Pope Sylvester developed toward the end of

7056-557: The 1901 "Interruption" by Constantine P. Cavafy references the myth of Demophon as told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter . The first Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite has also been cited as an influence on Alfred Hitchcock 's 1954 film Rear Window , particularly for the character of Lisa Freemont, played by Grace Kelly . Judith Fletcher has traced allusions to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter in Neil Gaiman 's 2002 children's novel Coraline and its 2009 film adaptation , arguing that

7200-502: The Byzantine period. The surviving medieval manuscripts of the poems date to the fifteenth century and are drawn primarily from the late-antique compilation of the Homeric Hymns along with Orphic and other hymnic poetry. They all descend from a single, now-lost manuscript, known in scholarship by the siglum Ω ( omega ) and possibly written in minuscule . In fifteenth-century Italy, the hymns were copied widely. A manuscript known by

7344-435: The Christian church which they saw as a threat to the peace of the empire, and that Constantine and his successors did what they did for the same reasons. Rome had been removing anything it saw as a challenge to Roman identity since Bacchic associations were dissolved in 186 BCE; this had become the pattern for the Roman state's response to anything it saw as a religious threat. According to Brown, that attitude and belief in what

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7488-522: The East". Historian Ramsay MacMullen explains this by saying Constantine "wanted to obliterate non-Christians, but lacking the means, he had to be content with robbing their temples". Constantine did not obliterate what he took, though. He reused it. Litehart says "Constantinople was newly founded, but it deliberately evoked the Roman past religiously as well as politically". Constantinople continued to offer room to pagan religions: there were shrines for

7632-495: The Eastern Provincials , never mentions any law against sacrifices. Archaeologist Luke Lavan writes that blood sacrifice was already declining in popularity by the time of Constantine, just as construction of new temples was also declining, but that this seems to have little to do with anti-paganism. Drake has written that Constantine personally abhorred sacrifice and removed the obligation to participate in them from

7776-461: The Great ( r.   306–337) in the military colony of Aelia Capitolina ( Jerusalem ), when he destroyed a pagan temple for the purpose of constructing a Christian church. Rome had periodically confiscated church properties, and Constantine was vigorous in reclaiming them whenever these issues were brought to his attention. Christian historians alleged that Hadrian (2nd century) had constructed

7920-426: The Hellenistic scholiasts of Alexandria, though they were used and adapted by Alexandrian poets, particularly of the third century BCE. Eratosthenes , the chief librarian at Alexandria, adapted the Homeric Hymn to Hermes for his own Hermes , an account of the god's birth and invention of the lyre. Phainomena , a didactic poem about the heavens by Aratus , drew on the same poem. Callimachus drew on

8064-506: The Holy Land for the purpose of constructing churches, destroying the temples in those places. For example, Constantine destroyed the Temple of Aphrodite in Lebanon. However, archaeology indicates this type of destruction did not happen as often as the literature claims. For example, at the sacred oak and spring at Mamre , a site venerated and occupied by Christians, Jews and pagans alike,

8208-642: The Joust'), written in the 1470s by Angelo Poliziano , paraphrase the second Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite , and were in turn an inspiration for Sandro Botticelli 's The Birth of Venus , painted in the 1480s. Georgius Dartona made the first translation of the Homeric Hymns into Latin, which was published in Paris by Chrétien Wechel  [ fr ] in 1538. Around 1570, the French humanist Jean Daurat gave lectures in which he advanced an allegorical reading of

8352-639: The Life of Constantine often do not correspond, "closely, or at all", to the text of the Codes themselves. Eusebius gives these laws a "strongly Christian interpretation by selective quotation or other means". This has led many to question the veracity of his record. While most scholars agree it is likely Constantine did institute the first laws against sacrifice, leading to its end by the 350's, paganism itself did not end when public sacrifice did. Brown explains that polytheists were accustomed to offering prayers to

8496-542: The Parthenon frieze was preserved after the Christian conversion of the temple, although in modified form. According to historian Gilbert Dagron , there were fewer temples constructed empire-wide, for mostly financial reasons, after the building craze of the 2nd century ended. However, Constantine's reign did not comprise the end of temple construction. In addition to destroying temples, he both permitted and commissioned temple construction. The dedication of new temples

8640-638: The Roman Empire was "completely tolerant, in heaven as on earth". Peter Garnsey strongly disagrees with those who describe the attitude concerning the "plethora of cults" in the Roman empire before Constantine as "tolerant" or "inclusive". In his view, it is a misuse of terminology. Garnsey has written that foreign gods were not tolerated in the modern sense, but were made subject, together with their communities, when they were conquered. Roman historian Eric Orlin says that Roman religion's willingness to adopt foreign gods and practices into its pantheon

8784-426: The Telesterion, as both at 55 yard precincts, as first set out by James D. Wenn. 38°02′27″N 23°32′19″E  /  38.0408°N 23.5386°E  / 38.0408; 23.5386 Homeric Hymns The Homeric Hymns ( Ancient Greek : Ὁμηρικοὶ ὕμνοι , romanised :  Homērikoì húmnoi ) are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns and one epigram . The hymns praise deities of

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8928-408: The allusions in the novel's text are "subliminal" but become explicit in the film. Only a few ancient papyrus copies of the Homeric Hymns are known. An Attic vase painted around 470 BCE shows a youth, seated, holding a scroll with the first two words of the second Homeric Hymn to Hermes : this has been used to suggest that the hymns were used as educational texts by this period. At least

9072-639: The belief that the Hymn to Apollo was the work of Kynaithos of Chios , one of the Homeridae , a circle of poets claiming descent from Homer. Some ancient biographies of Homer denied his authorship of the Homeric Hymns , and the hymns' comparative absence, relative to the Iliad and Odyssey , from the work of scholars based in Hellenistic (323–30 BCE) Alexandria may suggest that they were no longer considered to be his work by this period. However, few direct statements denying Homer's authorship of

9216-533: The city remained protected by law. At times, Constantius acted to protect paganism itself. According to author and editor Diana Bowder, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus records in his history Res Gestae , that pagan sacrifices and worship continued taking place openly in Alexandria and Rome . The Roman Calendar of the year 354 cites many pagan festivals as though they were still being openly observed. In 357, Constantius II linked divination and magic in

9360-520: The debate as to the nature of early Greek religion in early-nineteenth-century German scholarship. The anthropologist James George Frazer discussed the hymn at length in The Golden Bough , his influential 1890 work of comparative mythology and religion. James Joyce made use of the same hymn, and possibly Frazer's work, in his 1922 novel Ulysses , in which the character Stephen Dedalus references "an old hymn to Demeter" while undergoing

9504-507: The downfall of the temples lay quite simply in his neglect of them. Constantine's policies were largely continued by his sons though not universally or continuously. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Constantius issued bans on sacrifice which were in keeping with his personal maxim: "Cesset superstitio; sacrificiorum aboleatur insania" (Let superstition cease; let the folly of sacrifices be abolished). He removed

9648-593: The early fifth century BCE, and to have been collected into a single corpus after the third century CE. Their influence on Greek literature and art was relatively small until the third century BCE, when they were used extensively by Alexandrian poets including Callimachus , Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes . They were also an influence on Roman poets, such as Lucretius , Catullus , Virgil , Horace and Ovid . In late antiquity ( c.  200  – c.  600 CE ), they influenced both pagan and Christian literature, and their collection as

9792-570: The empire's population at the time of Constantine's conversion, they did not have the numerical advantage to form a sufficient power–base to begin a systematic persecution of pagans. Brown reminds his readers, "We should not underestimate the fierce mood of the Christians of the fourth century", and, he says, it must be remembered that repression, persecution and martyrdom do not generally breed tolerance of those same persecutors. Brown says Roman authorities had shown no hesitation in "taking out"

9936-456: The end of the fifth century BCE respectively. This attribution may have reflected the high esteem in which the hymns were held, as well as their stylistic similarities with the Homeric poems. The dialect of the hymns, an artificial literary language ( Kunstsprache ) derived largely from the Aeolic and Ionic dialects of Greek, is similar to that used in the Iliad and Odyssey . Like

10080-563: The end of the period of Antiquity and the institution of the Law Codes of Justinian , there was a shift from the generalized legislation which characterized the Theodosian Code to actions which targeted individual centers of paganism. The gradual transition towards more localized action, corresponds with the period when most conversions of temples to churches were undertaken: the late 5th and 6th centuries. Chuvin says that, through

10224-436: The evidence indicates Constantine favored those who favored consensus, chose pragmatists over ideologues of any persuasion, and wanted peace and harmony "but also inclusiveness and flexibility". In his article Constantine and Consensus , Drake concludes that Constantine's religious policy was aimed at including the church in a broader policy of civic unity, even though his personal views undoubtedly favored one religion over

10368-443: The festival calendar had 12 lunar months , the celebrations were not strictly calibrated to a year of 365 days. During the festival, Athens was crowded with visitors. At the climax of the ceremonies at Eleusis, the initiates entered the Telesterion where they were shown the sacred relics of Demeter and the priestesses revealed their visions of the holy night (probably a fire that represented the possibility of life after death ). This

10512-464: The fifth canto of his Rhododaphne , published posthumously in 1818. In January 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley made a translation of some of the shorter Homeric Hymns into heroic couplets; in July 1820, he translated the Hymn to Hermes into ottava rima . Of Shelley's own poems, The Witch of Atlas , written in 1820, and With a Guitar, to Jane , written in 1822, were most closely influenced by

10656-560: The fifth century in a romantic depiction of Sylvester's life which has survived as the Actus beati Sylvestri papae (CPL 2235). This story absolved the medieval church of a major embarrassment: Constantine's baptism by an Arian bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia , which occurred while on campaign to Persia. Constantine swung through the Holy Land with the intent of being baptized in the Jordan river , but he became deathly ill at Nicomedia where he

10800-483: The first English translation of them in 1624. Part of their text was incorporated, via a 1710 translation by William Congreve , into George Frideric Handel 's 1744 musical drama Semele . The rediscovery of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter in 1777 led to a resurgence of European interest in the hymns. In the arts, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used the Hymn to Demeter as an inspiration for his 1778 melodrama Proserpina . Their textual criticism progressed considerably over

10944-424: The first half of the eighteenth century, Jacques Philippe d’Orville  [ de ] wrote a book of notes on the text of the Homeric Hymns , in which he condemned Barnes's then-standard 1711 edition and the 1722 edition of Michel Maittaire . The first modern textual criticism of the hymns dates to 1749, when David Ruhnken published his readings of two medieval manuscripts, known as A and C. The hymns' text

11088-719: The forces of Alaric the Visigoth invaded the Eastern Roman Empire and ravaged Attica, destroying the Telesterion , which was never to be rebuilt. The Athenians used several calendars, each for different purposes. The festival of Eleusinia was celebrated each year in Eleusis and Athens for nine days from the 15th to the 23rd of the month of Boedromion (in September or October of the Gregorian calendar ); because

11232-427: The fourth century BCE, few compositions appear to have been intended for repeat performance or long-term transmission. The Homeric Hymns may have been composed to be recited at religious festivals, perhaps at singing contests: several directly or indirectly ask the god's support in competition. Some allude to the deity's cult at a specific place and may have been composed for performance within that cult, though

11376-569: The fourth-century Christian hymns known as the Poemata Arcana , written by Gregory of Nazianzus . In the fifth century, the Greek-speaking poet Nonnus quoted and adapted the hymns; from that time onwards, other poets, such as Musaeus Grammaticus and Coluthus , made use of them. Although the Homeric Hymns were known and transmitted in the Byzantine period, they were only rarely referenced, and never quoted, in Byzantine literature. The sixth-century poet Paul Silentiarius celebrated

11520-487: The gladiatorial shows while still attending them, made laws that threatened and menaced pagans who continued to sacrifice, while also making other laws that markedly favored Christianity; and he personally endowed Christians with gifts of money, land and government positions. Yet, Constantine did not stop the established state support of the traditional religious institutions, nor did society substantially change its pagan nature under his rule. Constantine never engaged in

11664-575: The gods in many ways and places that did not include sacrifice, that pollution was only associated with sacrifice, and that the ban on sacrifice had fixed boundaries and limits. Paganism thus remained widespread into the early fifth century continuing in parts of the empire into the seventh and beyond. Maijastina Kahlos , scholar of Roman literature, says religion before Christianity was a decidedly public practice. Therefore, private divination, astrology, and 'Chaldean practices' (formulae, incantations, and imprecations designed to repulse demons and protect

11808-462: The gods to support the portrayal of human affairs. The poems also make use of different narrative styles: the Homeric Hymns are unlike the Homeric epics in that they employ iterative narration (accounts of events which repeatedly or habitually occur), which is relatively rare in ancient Greek literature, within passages of singulative narration (accounts of specific events related in sequence). René Nünlist  [ de ] has also suggested that

11952-602: The great architect of the Parthenon , built the Telesterion big enough to hold thousands of people. In about 318 BCE, Philon added a portico with twelve Doric columns . The Telesterion continued to see use throughout the Roman period. In 170 CE, during the rule of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius , an ancient tribe called the Costoboci launched an invasion of Roman territory south of the Danube, entering Thracia and ravaging

12096-513: The hands and feet of statues of the divine, mutilating heads and genitals, tearing down altars and "purging sacred precincts with fire" were seen as 'proving' the impotence of the gods, but pagan icons were also seen as having been “polluted” by the practice of sacrifice. A ritual and chiseling crosses onto them cleansed them. Once these objects were detached from "the contagion" of sacrifice, they were seen as having returned to innocence. Many statues and temples were then preserved as art. For example,

12240-511: The historian (Constantine's contemporary) writes in a passage from his In Defense of the Temples that Constantine 'looted the Temples' around the eastern empire in order to get their treasures to build Constantinople. Noel Lenski  [ de ] says that Constantinople was "literally crammed with [pagan] statuary gathered, in Jerome 's words, by 'the virtual denuding' of every city in

12384-518: The hymns as a separate text, without the Homeric epics, was made in 1796 by Karl David Ilgen and followed by editions by August Mattiae in 1805 and Gottfried Hermann in 1806. In 1886, Albert Gemoll  [ de ] published a German edition of the hymns: this was both the first modern edition in a vernacular language (that is, not in Latin) and the only edition to date that has printed digammas in their text. The present conventional order of

12528-557: The hymns can be dated to the fourth century BCE, though the Thebaid of Antimachus may contain allusions to the hymns to Aphrodite, Dionysus and Hermes. A few fifth-century painted vases show myths depicted in the Homeric Hymns and may have been inspired by the poems, but it is difficult to be certain whether the correspondences reflect direct contact with the hymns or simply the commonplace nature of their underlying mythic narratives. The hymns do not appear to have been studied by

12672-445: The hymns end with a verse indicating that another song will follow, sometimes specifically a work of heroic epic. Over time, however, at least some may have lengthened and been recited independently of other works. The hymns which currently survive as shorter works may equally be abridgements of longer works, retaining the introduction and conclusion of a poem whose central narrative has been lost. The first known sources referring to

12816-434: The hymns survive from antiquity: in the second century CE, the Greek geographer Pausanias maintained their attribution to Homer. Irene de Jong has contrasted the narrative focus of the Homeric Hymns with that of the Homeric epics, writing that the gods are the primary focus of the hymns, with mortals serving primarily to witness the gods' actions, whereas the epics focus primarily on their mortal characters and use

12960-565: The hymns was established by the Oxford edition of Alfred Goodwin in 1893, following that employed by the manuscript M: previously, the Hymn to Apollo had been placed first. Reviewing Goodwin's work in 1894, Edward Ernest Sikes judged that most of the important work on the Homeric Hymns had previously been done by German scholars, and that "little of importance" had recently been written, apart from Goodwin's edition, on them in English. In

13104-500: The hymns' composition, though seven-stringed versions became more common during the seventh century BCE. A paean , probably written in 138 BCE, mentions the accompaniment of hymnic singing with a kithara (a seven-stringed instrument of the lyre family), and contrasts this style of music with that of the aulos , a reeded wind instrument. It is unlikely that early Greek music was written down; instead, compositions were transmitted aurally and passed on through tradition. Until

13248-593: The identity of the speaker. This made the hymns suitable for recitation by different speakers and for different audiences. Jenny Strauss Clay has suggested that the Homeric Hymns played a role in the establishment of a panhellenic conception of the Olympian pantheon, with Zeus as its head, and therefore in promoting the cultural unity of Greeks from different polities . The Homeric Hymns are quoted comparatively rarely in ancient literature. There are sporadic references to them in early Greek lyric poetry , such as

13392-524: The invoker ) all became associated with magic in the early imperial period (AD 1–30), and carried the threat of banishment and execution even under the pagan emperors. Lavan explains these same private and secret religious rituals were not just associated with magic but also with treason and secret plots against the emperor. Kahlos says Christian emperors inherited this fear of private divination. The church had long spoken against anything connected to magic and its uses. Polymnia Athanassiadi says that, by

13536-504: The latest, the Hymn to Ares , may have been composed as late as the fifth century CE. The Homeric Hymns share compositional similarities with the Iliad and the Odyssey , also traditionally attributed to Homer. They share the same artificial literary dialect of Greek, are composed in dactylic hexameter , and make use of short, repeated phrases known as formulae . It is unclear how far writing, as opposed to oral composition ,

13680-635: The latter did not necessarily follow from the former. They seem likely to have been performed frequently in various contexts throughout antiquity, such as at banquets or symposia . It has been suggested that the fifth hymn, to Aphrodite , could have been composed for performance at a royal or aristocratic court, perhaps of a family in the Troad claiming descent from Aphrodite via her son Aeneas . The hymns' narrative voice has been described by Marco Fantuzzi and Richard Hunter as "communal", usually making only generalised reference to their place of composition or

13824-507: The libretto in 1710; in 1744, George Frideric Handel released a version of the opera with his own music and alterations to the libretto made by an unknown collaborator, including a newly-added passage quoting Congreve's translation of the Hymn to Aphrodite . The rediscovery of the Hymn to Demeter in 1777 sparked a series of scholarly editions of the poem in Germany, and its first translations into German (in 1780) and Latin (in 1782). It

13968-469: The list of duties for imperial officials, but evidence of an actual sweeping ban on sacrifice is slight, while evidence of its continued practice is great. All records of anti-pagan legislation by Constantine are found in the Life of Constantine , written by Eusebius as a kind of eulogy after Constantine's death. It is not a history so much as a panegyric praising Constantine. The laws as they are stated in

14112-563: The literature says Constantine ordered the burning of the idols, the destruction of the altar, and erection of a church. The archaeology of the site, however, demonstrates that Constantine's church along with its attendant buildings, only occupied a peripheral sector of the precinct, leaving the rest unhindered. Temple destruction is attested to in 43 cases in the written sources, but only four have been confirmed by archaeological evidence. Archaeologists Lavan and Mulryan write that earthquakes, civil conflict, and external invasions caused much of

14256-511: The local pagan priests, astrologers, and augurs, though he still went back to Rome to celebrate his Vicennalia : his twenty-year jubilee. Two years after the consecration of Constantinople, Constantine left Rome behind, and on 4 November 328, new rituals were performed to dedicate the city as the new capital of the Roman empire. Among the attendants were the Neoplatonist philosopher Sopater and pontifex maximus Praetextus. A year and

14400-426: The longer hymns seem to have been collected into a single edition at some point during the Hellenistic period (323–30 BCE). Alexander Hall has argued that Hymns 1–26, except 6 (the Hymn to Aphrodite ) and 8 (the Hymn to Ares ), were initially collected into what he calls a "proto-collection", probably no earlier than the Hellenistic period, with the remaining hymns later added as an appendix . Unlike those of

14544-562: The mid fourth century, prophecy at the Oracles of Delphi and Didyma had been definitively stamped out. However, Athanassiadi says the church's real targets in Antiquity were home-made oracles for the practice of theurgy : the interpretation of dreams with the intent of influencing human affairs. The church had no prohibitions against the interpretation of dreams by itself, yet, according to Athanassiadi, both Church and State viewed using it to influence events as "the most pernicious aspect of

14688-551: The murder of the Arian bishop George of Cappadocia was committed by a mob of pagans, A Christian mob threw objects at Orestes and, finally, Hypatia was killed by a Christian mob though politics and personal jealousy were probably the primary causes. Mobs were composed of lower-class urban dwellers, upper class educated pagans, Jews and Christians, and in Alexandria, monks from the monastery of Nitria. Julian , who had been

14832-579: The nineteenth century, particularly in German scholarship, though the text continued to present substantial difficulties into the twentieth. The Homeric Hymns were also influential on the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century, particularly Leigh Hunt , Thomas Love Peacock and Percy Bysshe Shelley . Later poets to adapt the hymns included Alfred, Lord Tennyson , and Constantine P. Cavafy . Their influence has also been traced in

14976-568: The opening of the first Hymn to Aphrodite . The first English translation of the hymns was made by George Chapman in 1624, as part of his complete translation of Homer's works. Although they received relatively little attention in English poetry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the playwright and poet William Congreve published a version of the first Hymn to Aphrodite , written in heroic couplets , in 1710. Congreve also wrote an operatic libretto , Semele , set to music by John Eccles in 1707 but never performed. Congreve published

15120-456: The other. Leithart says Constantine attributed his military success to God, and during his reign, the empire was relatively peaceful. Lenski says there can be no real doubt Constantine genuinely converted to Christianity. In his personal views, Constantine denounced paganism as idolatry and superstition in that same document to the provincials where he espoused tolerance. Constantine and his contemporary Christians did not treat paganism as

15264-416: The pagan spirit". Constantine's decree against private divination did not classify divination in general as magic, therefore, even though all the emperors, Christian and pagan, forbade all secret rituals, Constantine still allowed the haruspices to practice their rituals in public. On 8 November 324, Constantine consecrated Byzantium as his new residence, Constantinoupolis – "city of Constantine" – with

15408-419: The palace guards. As a result, he developed an antipathy to Christianity which only deepened when Constantius executed Julian's only remaining brother in 354. Julian's religious beliefs were syncretic and he was initiated into at least three mystery religions , but his religious open-mindedness did not extend to Christianity. Julian lifted the ban on sacrifices, restored and reopened temples, and dismantled

15552-509: The people of Eleusis must create a temple to her where they would do things to gain back her favor. Even after Demeter got her daughter back from Hades for part of the year, the Eleusinian Mysteries continued. It was said in myth that Herakles partook in the Eleusian Mysteries as part of his twelfth labor in which he captured Cerberus , and during them, he saw visions of both Persephone and Demeter. Some temple use ceased during

15696-490: The poems as "hymns" ( hymnoi ) date from the first century BCE. In concept, an ancient hymn was an invocation of a deity, often connected with a specific cult or sanctuary associated with that deity. The hymns often cover the deity's birth, arrival on Olympus , and dealings with human beings. Several discuss the origins of the god's cult or the founding of a major sanctuary dedicated to them. Some are aetiological accounts of religious cults, specific rituals, aspects of

15840-511: The polymath Ioannes Eugenikos in the first half of the fifteenth century, possibly in Constantinople or Italy. This manuscript preserved both the first Hymn to Dionysus and the Hymn to Demeter , but both were lost at some point after its creation and remained unknown until 1777, when the philologist Christian Frederick Matthaei discovered Μ in a barn outside Moscow. All surviving manuscripts, apart from Μ, have among their sources

15984-470: The practice of recycling became common in Late Antiquity. Church restrictions opposing the pillaging of pagan temples by Christians were in place even while the Christians were being persecuted by the pagans. More common than destruction was the practice of "desacralization" or "deconsecration". According to the historical writings of Prudentius , the deconsecration of a temple merely required

16128-422: The privileged status of the Christians, giving generous tax remissions to the cities he favored and disfavor to those who remained Christian. He allowed religious freedom and spoke against overt compulsion, but there was little other option open to him. By the time Julian came to rule, the empire had been ruled by Christian emperors for two generations and the people had adapted. Bradbury writes that Julian

16272-473: The provinces of Macedonia and Achaea (Greece). The Costoboci reached as far south as Eleusis, where they destroyed the Telesterion. The emperor responded by dispatching general Vehilius Gratus Iulianus to Greece with emergency reinforcements, who eventually defeated the Costoboci. Marcus Aurelius then had the Telesterion rebuilt bigger than it had been before. Then only a few hundred years later in 396 CE,

16416-419: The rapid demise of paganism as occurring in the late fourth and early fifth centuries due to harsh Christian legislation and violence, and contemporary scholars who view the process as a long decline that began in the second century, before the emperors were themselves Christian, and which continued into the seventh century. This latter view contends that there was less conflict between pagans and Christians than

16560-428: The removal of the cult statue and altar, and it could be reused. The Law Codes from around the same time as Prudentius say that temples “empty of illicit things” were to suffer no further damage and idols were only “illicit” if they were still venerated. However, this was often extended to the removal or even destruction of other statues and icons, votive stelae, and all other internal imagery and decoration. Mutilating

16704-404: The restoration of Hagia Sophia by the emperor Justinian I in a poem which borrowed from the Homeric Hymn to Hermes . Later authors, such as the eleventh-century Michael Psellos , may have drawn upon them, but it is often unclear whether their allusions are drawn directly from the Homeric Hymns or from other works narrating the same myths. The hymns have also been cited as an inspiration for

16848-468: The severe legislation of the early Byzantine Empire , the freedom of conscience that had been the major benchmark set by the Edict of Milan was finally abolished. Non-Christians were a small minority by the time of the last western anti-pagan laws in the early 600s. Scholars fall into two categories on how and why this dramatic change took place: the long established traditional catastrophists who view

16992-574: The siglum V, commissioned by the Byzantine-born Catholic cardinal Bessarion probably in the 1460s, published the hymns at the end of a collection of the other works then considered Homeric. This arrangement became standard in subsequent editions of Homer's works, and played an important role in establishing the perceived relationship between the hymns, the Iliad and the Odyssey . The first printed edition ( editio princeps ) of

17136-457: The singer or their community. Little is known about the musical settings of the Homeric Hymns . The earliest surviving ancient Greek musical compositions date to the end of the fifth century BCE, after the composition of nearly all of the hymns. Originally, the hymns appear to have been performed by singers accompanying themselves on a stringed instrument, such as a lyre ; later, they may have been recited, rather than sung, by an orator holding

17280-512: The strength of the church and its charitable institutions, he wrote to the high priest of the province that all the new priests were to "follow a thoroughgoing programme of personal moral example and public institutions to outdo the Christians at their own game... for it is disgraceful that none of the Jews is a beggar and the impious Galilaeans provide support for our people as well as theirs". Julian reached Antioch on July 18 which coincided with

17424-414: The temple destruction of this era. The Roman economy of the third and fourth centuries struggled, and traditional polytheism was expensive. Roger S. Bagnall reports that imperial financial support declined markedly after Augustus. Lower budgets meant the physical decline of urban structures of all types. This progressive decay was accompanied by an increased trade in salvaged building materials, as

17568-541: The theft of Hercules 's cattle by the monster Cacus is based upon that of the theft of Apollo's cattle by Hermes in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes . The Roman poet Ovid made extensive use of the Homeric Hymns : his account of Apollo and Daphne in the Metamorphoses , published in 8 CE, references the Hymn to Apollo , while other parts of the Metamorphoses make reference to the Hymn to Demeter ,

17712-588: The third century CE. Between the fourth and the thirteenth centuries CE, the Homeric Hymns were generally transcribed in an edition which also contained the Hymns of Callimachus, the Orphic Hymns , the hymns of Proclus and the Orphic Argonautica . Manuscripts of the Homeric Hymns , often bundling them with other works such as the hymns of Callimachus, continued to be made during

17856-425: The twelfth-century poetry of Theodore Prodromos . The Homeric Hymns were copied and adapted widely in fifteenth-century Italy, for example by the poets Michael Marullus and Francesco Filelfo . Marsilio Ficino made a translation of them around 1462; Giovanni Tortelli used them for examples in his 1478 grammatical treatise De Orthographia . The Stanze per la giostra  [ it ] ('Stanzas for

18000-461: The two. There is a law in the Theodosian Code that dates to the time of Constantius for the preservation of the temples situated outside of city walls. Constantius also enacted a law that exacted a fine from those who were guilty of vandalizing sites holy to pagans and placed the care of these monuments and tombs under the pagan priests. Successive emperors in the 4th century made legislative attempts to curb violence against pagan shrines, and in

18144-415: The use of writing, and scholars debate the degree of consistency or "fixity" likely to have existed between early versions of the hymns in performance. The debate is clouded by the impossibility of determining for certain whether a poem with characteristic features of oral poetry was in fact composed orally, or composed using writing but in imitation of an oral-poetic style. Modern scholarship tends to avoid

18288-600: The words of an early edict, he decreed that polytheists could "celebrate the rites of an outmoded illusion," so long as they did not force Christians to join them. His earlier edict, the Edict of Milan , was restated in the Edict of the Provincials. Historian Harold A. Drake points out that this edict called for peace and tolerance: "Let no one disturb another, let each man hold fast to that which his soul wishes…" Constantine never reversed this edict. Drake goes on to say

18432-399: The works of James Joyce , the film Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock , and the novel Coraline by Neil Gaiman . The Homeric Hymns mostly date to the archaic period of Greek history, though they often retell much older stories. The earliest of the hymns date to the seventh century BCE; most were probably composed between that century and the sixth century BCE, though

18576-535: The works of Homer, which included the Homeric Hymns , was made by the Florence-based Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles in 1488–1489. The 1566 edition, made by Henri Estienne , was the first to include line numbers and a Latin translation. By the end of the eighteenth century, twenty-five Byzantine manuscripts were known. One, known as M or the Codex Mosquensis , was written by

18720-525: The works of Pindar and Sappho . The lyric poet Alcaeus composed hymns around 600 BCE to Dionysus and to the Dioscuri , which were influenced by the equivalent Homeric hymns, as possibly was Alcaeus's hymn to Hermes . The Homeric Hymn to Hermes also inspired the Ichneutae , a satyr play composed in the fifth century BCE by the Athenian playwright Sophocles . Few definite references to

18864-524: The world until she reaches Eleusis, where she is taken in by the King's daughters. She is overcome by grief, but she is given the Queen Metanira's latest born child, Demophoon to nurse. He grows more than any other child, but his mother is afraid when he is put over a flame before he can be made fully immortal. Demeter gets angry, and tells her that since she robbed her son of immortality and angered her,

19008-430: The worship of images, making them capital crimes , as well as ordering the closing of all temples. There is no evidence of the death penalty being carried out for illegal sacrifices before Tiberius Constantine ( r.   578–582), and most temples remained open into the reign of Justinian I ( r.   527–565). Pagan teachers (who included philosophers) were banned and their license, parrhesia, to instruct others

19152-449: Was a matter of considerable scholarly attention in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. August Baumeister published an edition of the hymns in 1860, which was the first to integrate readings based on the Θ ( theta ) family of manuscripts (a sub-family of those descended from Ψ). Robert Yelverton Tyrrell wrote in 1894 that the text of the Homeric Hymns had been in a "state of chaos" before Baumeister's edition, though their text

19296-399: Was also an influence on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's melodrama Proserpina , first published as a prose work in 1778. The hymns were frequently read, praised and adapted by the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century. In 1814, the essayist and poet Leigh Hunt published a translation of the second Hymn to Dionysus . Thomas Love Peacock adapted part of the same hymn in

19440-458: Was comparatively limited until the fifth century. The Hymn to Hermes was a partial exception, as it was frequently taught in schools. It is possibly alluded to in an anonymous third-century poem praising a gymnasiarch named Theon, preserved by a papyrus fragment found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt and probably written by a student for a local festival. It also influenced the "Strasbourg Cosmogony",

19584-485: Was involved in their creation. They may initially have served as preludes to the recitation of longer poems, and have been performed, at least originally, by singers accompanying themselves on a lyre or another stringed instrument. Performances of the hymns may have taken place at sympotic banquets, religious festivals and royal courts. There are references to the Homeric Hymns in Greek poetry from around 600 BCE; they appear to have been used as educational texts by

19728-491: Was not averse to a more subtle form of compulsion, and in 362, Julian promulgated a law that, in effect, forbid Christians from being teachers. Julian wrote that "right learning" was essential to pagan reform, and that such learning belonged only to those who showed 'piety toward the old gods'. In a letter written by Julian that still exists, he says: "Let [the Christians] keep to Matthew and Luke". Christians saw this as

19872-541: Was previously supposed. In the twenty-first century, the idea that Christianity became dominant through conflict with paganism has become marginalized, while a grassroots theory has developed. In 529 CE, the Byzantine emperor Justinian ordered the closing of the Academy at Athens. The last teachers of the Academy, Damascius and Simplicius were invited by a Persian ruler Khosrow I to Harran (now in Turkey), which became

20016-594: Was required to maintain the peace of the empire didn't change just because the emperors were Christian. According to Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, German historian of Antiquity, there is a persistent pagan tradition that Constantine did not persecute pagans. However, by twenty-first century definitions, Constantine can be said to have practiced a mild psychological and economic persecution of pagans. There are also indications he remained relatively tolerant of non-Christians throughout his long reign. Nine years after Diocletian celebrated twenty years of stable rule with sacrifices on

20160-560: Was still considered problematic at the turn of the 20th century: Thomas Leyden Agar wrote in 1916 of the "manifold and manifest" errors of tradition in the hymns. In 1984, Bruno Gentili  [ it ] suggested that variations found in the manuscript tradition as to the reading of particular passages may have been considered equally-correct alternations ( adiaphoroi ) available to a rhapsode, and therefore that attempts to discriminate between them in modern editions were misguided. Between 1894 and 1897, Thomas William Allen published

20304-425: Was swiftly baptized. He died shortly thereafter on May 22, 337 at a suburban villa named Achyron. Scott Bradbury, professor of classical languages, writes that Constantine's policies toward pagans are "ambiguous and elusive" and that "no aspect has been more controversial than the claim he banned blood sacrifices". Bradbury says the sources on this are contradictory, quoting Eusebius who says he did, and Libanius ,

20448-577: Was the most secretive part of the Mysteries and those who had been initiated were forbidden to ever speak of the events that took place in the Telesterion. The origin of the ritual of the Eleusinia is from the myth of Persephone being taken to Hades in the underworld, while her mother Demeter frantically seeks her in the mortal world. After she learns that Zeus allowed the kidnapping to happen, she turns herself into an old women and wanders around

20592-472: Was visiting Rome. In Thompson's view, this makes the altar's removal an act to accommodate his personal religion without offending the pagan senators by refusing to observe their rites. Soon after the departure of Constantius, the altar was restored. Constantius also shut down temples, ended tax relief and subsidies for pagans, and imposed the death penalty on those who consulted soothsayers. Orientalist Alexander Vasiliev says that Constantius carried out

20736-520: Was withdrawn. Parrhesia had been used for a thousand years to denote "freedom of speech." Despite official threats, sporadic mob violence , and confiscations of temple treasures, paganism remained widespread into the early fifth century, continuing in parts of the empire into the seventh century, and into the ninth century in Greece. During the reigns of Gratian , Valentinian II and Theodosius I anti-pagan policies and their penalties increased. By

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