as “destroyer”]... destroy them (ollye) as you do destroy’; Aesch. Sept. 146
κα? σ3, Λ3κει, Eναξ, Λ3κειο γνου στρατ;ι δαRωι, ‘and thou, lord Lykeios
[understood as “wolflike”], be lykeios towards the enemy horde’.^34
The worshipper or praise-singer hopes that the deity is pleased with his
offering, and sometimes expresses this hope aloud, especially at the end of
his hymn. RV 1. 12. 12 imám
̇
stómam
̇jus
̇asva nah
̇, ‘be gratified with this our
laudation’; 1. 73. 10 eta ̄ ́ te Agna ucátha ̄ni vedho | jús
̇
t
̇a ̄ni santu mánase hr
̇dé ca,
‘let these praises, lord Agni, be gratifying to thy mind and heart’; cf. 1. 10. 12,
- 7; 4. 50. 10; Anacreon, PMG 357. 7 f. #λθ, kμιν, κεχαρισμνη δ, ε1χωλH
$πακο3ειν, ‘come to us and hear our favour-finding prayer’; Bacchyl. 17. 130
∆α ́ λιε, χορο4σι ΚηRων φρνα !ανθε? Zπαζε θεο ́ πομπον $σθλ;ν τ3χαν, ‘Delian
god, be thy heart warmed by this Ceian dance and grant god-sent fortune’;
Ar. Nub. 269–74 #λθετε δHτ,, p πολυτμητοι Νεφλαι... 0πακο3σατε
δεξα ́ μεναι θυσαν κα? το4 Tερο4σι χαρε4σαι, ‘come, esteemed Clouds...
respond, accepting our sacrifice and joying in the ceremony’; id., Thesm. 111,
313, 980; Hymn. Curet. 5 f. (refrain).
The end of the hymn is where the poet is most likely to make personal
allusions to his patron or to himself.^35 The Vedic Rishis quite often identify
themselves or their family in the last stanza of a hymn, as in RV 5. 1. 12, 7. 10, - 4, 33. 10, 40. 9, 64. 7, 81. 5; 7. 7. 7, 8. 7, 9. 6, 12. 3, etc.; 10. 63. 17, 64. 16 f.,
etc.^36 The Delian hymn to Apollo ended with the famous passage where the
poet speaks of himself as a blind man from Chios (Hymn. Ap. 166–78).
Bacchylides in the closing lines quoted above refers to the Cean chorus he
has trained, and thus indirectly to his own provenance. He ends one of his
Epinicians (3. 96–8) with a reference to himself as the ‘honey-tongued Cean
nightingale’. Here we are no longer in the hymnic genre, but it seems to
have become a general convention that in lyric poems performed on public
occasions, where the poet’s personal concerns were not the main subject
matter, he might refer to himself at the end or express there some personal
viewpoint.^37 When Timotheus ends his citharodic nome The Persians with
a substantial personal epilogue in which he names himself (202–36), we
cannot separate this epideictic manifesto from the old Graeco-Aryan hymn
tradition.
(^34) Durante (1976), 153 f.
(^35) Durante (1976), 182–4.
(^36) Further references in Durante (1976), 183 f.; ‘libro VI’ in his n. 16 should read ‘libro VII’.
(^37) See Walther Kranz, Stasimon (Berlin 1933), 120–3.
- Hymns and Spells 325