requirement to communicate with these deities. For that is surely the simplest
definition of this topic: prayers and hymns are attempts by men and women to
communicate with gods by means of the voice.
If I propose that the Greeks prayed often to one or several of their many gods to ask
them for good things, and sang hymns to worship these gods, I expect the general
reaction would be ‘‘Well, I knew that,’’ and one might stop there. We have a
preconceived notion of what a prayer or a hymn is like, and anyone who has studied
the Greeks even a little has an idea of which gods the Greeks addressed. So perhaps I
should concentrate on surprising features of Greek hymns and prayers, or at least on
selected themes which clash somewhat with preconceived notions.. If I do this, it is at
the cost of a systematic treatment of ‘‘hymns and prayers’’ in handbook style. This
can be found elsewhere. Nevertheless I shall attempt in the course of thematic
remarks to allude to the main categories and distinctions involved. I will also try, in
the main, to treat hymns and prayers together, although we can certainly distinguish
them as phenomena. Like us, the Greeks had different words for hymns and prayers
(hymnoiandeuchai), as well as a bewildering array of terms for the different species of
the genus ‘‘hymn’’; and there were various words for ‘‘prayer,’’ too, also with distinct
shades of meaning. More on those later.
The preconceived notion is, presumably, that one ‘‘speaks’’ a prayer and ‘‘sings’’ a
hymn. Hence Bremer (1981:193) gave an umbrella definition of ‘‘hymn’’ as ‘‘a sung
prayer.’’ Pulleyn (1997:44–7) took issue with this, arguing that hymns are often not, or
not really, prayers, because they do not ask the gods for anything and that is what prayer
does: ask the gods for good things. But the objection is a misunderstanding, in my
opinion, as Bremer’s definition of the hymn as a ‘‘sung prayer’’ depends on a wider
notion of ‘‘prayer’’ (‘‘address to god(s)’’) than Pulleyn uses (‘‘request to god(s)’’). But
singing is certainly one formal attribute of hymns which sets them apart from prayers.
The Greeks trained choruses of men and women, boys and girls, to sing hymns to the
accompaniment of various musical instruments within the context of cult. Alkman’s
Louvrepartheneion, for example, was a cult song (probably) for Artemis sung by a
chorus of girls; or Pindar’s sixth paean was a cult song for Delphic Apollo performed by
young men. Moreover, even if we did not believe our numerous sources which refer to
sung cult hymns for the gods, we do have some texts of hymns transmitted with a sort
of musical score to denote either the required vocal melody or the musical accompani-
ment (Furley and Bremer 2001: no. 2.6). We even have a few pictures of choruses
performing song-dance. This must have been a feature of Greek society throughout
the era concerned which was both utterly familiar to the Greeks and virtually unknown
to us in Western society: outdoor choric performances of cult songs as part of com-
munity worship (Golder and Scully 1994–5). Choruses sang hymns as they processed
to temples; they sang them standing, or moving sedately, round the god’s altar when
they arrived there. And some song-dances for the god of inebriation, Dionysus, must
have been – to judge from vase paintings of dancing maenads – as wild as any modern
dancing to rock music. Singing involves not only melody but also meter: the vast
repertoire of ancient Greek lyric meters was designed to introduce variety and beauty in
choric performance, not to baffle modern students. Presumably the tunes and rhythms
stuck in the ancient ear as tenaciously as some modern pop songs.
Thesemusicalfeatures must have been largely lacking in prayers, although spoken
language has its own melody and rhythm, and repetition can result in a sort of chant.
118 William D. Furley