TFBT: Loeb’s Homeric Hymns

I am reading the Homeric Hymns in Ancient Greek with help from Loeb

Homeric Hymn to Dionysus

·      The suggestion that Dionysus was born in the deep-whirling Alpheus, recalls the fated-birth of Apollo and Artemis in the Peleus River in the Valle of Tempe.

·      Line seven in the Greek; “Father of men and gods”.  In English “Father of gods and men”

·      Dionysus birth in hiding from Hera recalls Zeus’ from Cronus.  The Curetes and Orphic Titans playing different roles from one another.

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

·      “Qeon” = goddess?

·      M.L. West often translates “Cronide” as Zeus.

·      Why the phrase “immortal gods and mortal men”?  Like we all don’t know that men die? M.L. West drops “men” sometimes when both mortal and men are in the Greek.  

More notes to come.