Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White
The Homeric Hymns are thirty-three ancient poems celebrating individual Greek gods and composed in the same epic dactylic hexameter used by Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey, employing many similar formulas in the same dialect. In Antiquity, they were freely attributed to Homer, but they are generally considered to be the products of several slightly later poets.
The oldest of the Hymns was written in the seventh century BC, placing them among the oldest writings of Greek literature. Although most of the hymns were composed in the seventh and sixth centuries, a few are likely Hellenistic, while The Hymn to Ares could be a late pagan work, inserted because a hymn to that god was lacking. The hymns, which must be the remains of a once more strongly represented genre, vary widely in length — some being as brief as three or four lines, while others are in excess of five hundred lines. The longer hymns comprise an invocation, praise and narrative, sometimes extended. In the briefest hymns, the narrative element is lacking.
The thirty-three hymns praise most of the major gods of Greek mythology; at least the shorter ones may have served as preludes to the recitation of epic verse at festivals by professional rhapsodes: often the singer concludes by saying he will pass to another song. A thirty-fourth poem, To Hosts is not a hymn, but a reminder that hospitality is a sacred duty enjoined by the gods.