Against Kinesias). One might think that there was an essential difference between
public and private prayer (the one conspicuous, the other secluded), but in fact
private prayer tended to be like public prayer only on a smaller scale: members of
the household gathered to say, and witness, the prayers spoken by the family head.
Hymns
A first meaningful distinction is between the hymnic mode used by rhapsodes as
prelude (technically prooimion) to their performances of epic, and hymns sung
(usually by a chorus) as an element of cult (Race 1990:102–11). TheHomeric
Hymnsfall in the first category: they consist largely of narratives about the god’s
birth and/or exploits and finish with a brief prayer to the god to receive the song
graciously before the singer turns to another – presumably epic – song (Allen, Halli-
day, and Sikes 1936). The mode of these rhapsodicprooimia– dactylic hexameters,
diction similar to that of Homer, epic narrative – was imitated (with the exception
of the fifthHymn to Athena) by Callimachus and adapted for later forms such as
theOrphic Hymns(Quandt 1962), Proclus’Hymns(Van den Berg 2000), and the
hymns we find dispersed through the magical papyri (Preisendanz, Heitsch, and
Henrichs 1973–4:II.237–66). Such texts are usually aboutthe god in the third
person, describing his or her attributes and achievements rather than preparing the
ground for a specific request (Race 1990:103). They may originally have been sung,
like epic itself, then recited. They were, presumably, composed principally for per-
formance at panhellenic song competitions. Clay (1989) is quite right that, collect-
ively, they have the effect of charting the Olympians’ prerogatives relative to Zeus and
each other.
Cult hymns, on the other hand, were meant for performance during religious ritual,
whether calendrical festival or special event. Here one can make distinctions
using functional criteria (which cult? which god?), sometimes supported by formal
characteristics (typical refrain, style etc.). Ancient taxonomies of cult hymns such as
that of Proclus tend to associate hymn types with certain gods. Thus the dithyramb is
said to be an excited type of cult song performed for Dionysus, whilst the paean and
nome are more dignified songs performed in Apolline worship. With its typical refrain
ie ̄Paian, addressed to Paieon, an originally independent healer-god, and its con-
tinued association with the family of Olympian healers (Apollo, Asclepius, his sons and
Hygieia herself), the paean may be thought to constitute a very distinctive class of
supplicatory hymn. The core use of the paean seems to have been entreaty of a savior
god by humans facing peril in, for example, battle or plague (Ka ̈ppel 1992).
The Thebandaphne ̄phorikonwas a form practiced by Pindar for a specific Theban
cult of Apollo. Artemis typically had herPartheneia, or girls’-songs, andoupingoi
(‘‘we hear’’).
Another ancient distinction is that between the ‘‘hymn proper’’ performed round
the god’s altar and the ‘‘processional hymn’’ (prosodion) performed on the way there.
Incidentally, we should not be misled by Alexandrian editions of Pindar’s cult songs
in separate books of paeans, dithyrambs,prosodia,daphne ̄phorika, and hymns (!) into
thinking that the first types were not hymns; they were all hymns according to the
general sense of the wordhymnos; a separate book ofhymnoiexisted, presumably, as
catch-all for compositions which were not recognizably paeans, dithyrambs, etc.
Prayers and Hymns 129