THE HYMN TO APHRODITE


The Hymn to Aphrodite is, in a literary sense, one of the most beautiful
and quite the most Homeric in the collection. By "Homeric" I mean that
if we found the adventure of Anchises occurring at length in the Iliad,
by way of an episode, perhaps in a speech of AEneas, it would not strike
us as inconsistent in tone, though occasionally in phrase. Indeed the
germ of the Hymn occurs in Iliad, B. 820: "AEneas, whom holy Aphrodite
bore to the embraces of Anchises on the knowes of Ida, a Goddess couching
with a mortal." Again, in E. 313, AEneas is spoken of as the son of
Aphrodite and the neat-herd, Anchises. The celebrated prophecy of the
future rule of the children of AEneas over the Trojans (Y. 307), probably
made, like many prophecies, after the event, appears to indicate the
claim of a Royal House at Ilios, and is regarded as of later date than
the general context of the epic. The AEneid is constructed on this hint;
the Romans claiming to be of Trojan descent through AEneas. The date of
the composition cannot be fixed from considerations of the Homeric tone;
thus lines 238-239 may be a reminiscence of Odyssey, [Greek text]. 394,
and other like suggestions are offered. {41} The conjectures as to date
vary from the time of Homer to that of the _Cypria_, of Mimnermus (the
references to the bitterness of loveless old age are in his vein) of
Anacreon, or even of Herodotus and the Tragedians. The words [Greek
text], [Greek text], and other indications are relied on for a late date:
and there are obvious coincidences with the Hymn to Demeter, as in line
174, _Demeter_ 109, f. Gemoll, however, takes this hymn to be the