The thesis of this book is that the Homeric Hymn to Hermes was composed in Athens c. 500. Although the central argument is not compelling, much of the book remains a valuable contribution to study of the hymn and cognate myths.
N. approaches myth with goals characteristic of recent Italian scholarship, namely to reconstruct the localisation and history of mythic variants. This emphasis on localism opposes – I think correctly – some meanings of the ambiguous label ‘pan-Hellenic’, as N. observes in the brief introduction. Her view is that the Hymn to Hermes presented a widely acceptable characterisation of Hermes, but that elements of its narrative remain ‘profoundly linked to the cultic and cultural reality’ in which it developed (p. 11).
The first six chapters alternate between presenting background material and applying it to the hymn. Chapter 1 is inspired by the question ‘Why does Hermes take his cattle out of the way to Pylos?’, and N. settles on the answer that cattle-rustling had a venerable mythical association with the Western Peloponnese.Footnote 1 The rest of the chapter is an extensive, useful and at times innovative study of the relevant myths. Chapter 2 argues for the influence of this mythical background on the hymn's presentation of Hermes' cattle-theft. Of particular interest are the verbal connections drawn in the hymn between Hermes and Heracles (who stole cattle from both Augeias and Geryon), and the track-concealing tricks in the stories of Autolycus and Sisyphus and of Heracles and Cacus; Chapter 2.5 constructs a slender but intriguing bridge from Hermes' butchery of two cows, through the importance of Hermes' prophecy within the hymn, to myths of Iamus and Melampus learning empyromancy at Olympia. (Other arguments are weaker. 2.1 notes the shared motif of cattle-thief as initiand, but this schema derives from Indo-European rather than Pylos specifically. 2.2 and 2.6 draw tenuous connections from H.Herm. to reconstructed ur-myths about stealing Helios' cattle and about binding prophets respectively. According to 2.4, Onchestus appears solely to allude to Pylos' patron Poseidon.)
At the transition between Chapters 2 and 3 the focus shifts from the influence of these cattle-rustling myths on the Hymn to Hermes to the origin of ‘the myth’ of Hermes' cattle-rustling, which N. places in the West Peloponnese some time in c. 800–550. The shift seems to be grounded in an unwarranted assumption that Hermes' cattle-rustling was oriented towards prophecy already in its earliest form. This leads into knots: the hymnist relocated Hermes' oracle from the Peloponnese to Parnassus to make the passage more comprehensible (p. 116), as we can tell because it is incomprehensible (p. 112).
Chapters 3–4 tackle the question ‘How did this myth reach its present form in an active rhapsodic school of the late 6th century?’. First N. notes that Pylos played an important role in Athenian identity in the sixth century and studies the evidence for Pylian myths in (almost exclusively) Athens. This inspires her to seek a decisive argument that the Hymn to Hermes was composed in Athens. She argues that the story of Hermes inventing the tortoiseshell lyre was little known outside Arcadia until the Late Archaic period, and observes that Athenian art from c. 510 starts acknowledging Hermes' musicianship and, in two cases, his idea of making Apollo's cows walk backwards. By supposing that our hymn was the first composition to combine the stories of the cattle-theft and the invention of the lyre, N. argues that these vases demonstrate its direct influence and thus its composition in Athens of this period. (But the supposition is highly dubious, vase-painting did not only respond passively to texts, and the hymn's influence on Athenian art would not imply Athenian composition.) Besides supplementary discussions of elements which might have particular resonance in Athens but are also known elsewhere (sacrificial ballots, the Dodecatheon and various cult-epithets), N. also claims that the hymn's presentation of technê, particularly as regards lyre-playing and forensic rhetoric, points decisively to the influence of sophistic thought-patterns at Athens. However, these patterns (especially regarding oratory) would normally be dated significantly later and travelled along with their teachers, far beyond Athens.
Chapter 5 sets N.'s conclusions against a detailed survey of Hermes' rather meagre cult in contemporary Athens, omitting hypotheses about deme-level rites. This leaves carte blanche for suggestions about an original performance setting (Chapter 6). A proem to public rhapsodic contests would point to the Panathenaea, and N. works through this scenario cleverly. She then speculates that the hymn could have received secondary performances in symposia or small public gatherings. Finally, Chapter 7 turns to the hymn's influence in Athens. 7.2 has a good survey of links to Sophocles' Ichneutai, whereas the relationships traced to PV and to Aristophanes' Peace and Wealth seem superficial.
The argument is generally well arranged, though myths can get scattered (e.g. across pp. 61, 109 and 139) and a subject index would therefore have been a helpful addition to the index locorum. I certainly missed a clear exposition of N.'s methodology, whose assumptions frequently struck me as requiring caution. To take one instance among many: ‘Coincidences involving nexuses of formulas are never fortuitous’ (p. 81). In particular, N. frequently acknowledges but never addresses the difficulties with her bemusingly confident positivism. She infers that the Hymn to Hermes was the first composition to connect the cattle-theft to the invention of the lyre, simply because it is the first one known to have done so, as if we had not lost the vast majority of archaic story-telling. The Athenocentrism of Chapter 3 may be based just on lack of material from elsewhere, but leads to a prejudice in favour of Athens in Chapter 4, particularly evident when a non-Attic hydria of c. 530 which depicts Hermes in his cot being accused by Apollo while the cows are hidden in a separate cave (Louvre E702), is distanced from the hymn using quite different standards from those applied a few pages later to the Attic vases (p. 151). In general, the vast gaps in our knowledge of other states means that no argument like ‘H.Herm. has feature X; X is only otherwise attested in Athens, from year Y; therefore H.Herm. was composed in Athens around year Y’ is cogent.
N.'s command of secondary literature is generally impressive. The book is admirably produced except for several dozen typos, particularly in Greek citations.
