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Because of a memorable simile in the Odyssey (5.483—490),
where the sea-battered hero is compared to an ember stowed in
open country, and the disguised hero's offer to tend the fire-lights
in his own hall (18.317 and 343—344), we must find interesting
suggestion that Hermes is fire-preserver that we find in the second
of two hymns to Hestia, No. 29, where the roving mischief-maker is
unexpectedly coupled in prayer with the staid, stay-at-home Hearth-
-goddess as giver of blessing to homes (ll. 7—13).
APHRODITE (Hymns 5, 6, and 10)
The splendid long Hymn No. 5 dramatizes in its central action
an immortal-mortal relationship, between the goddess of love and
sex and the young hunter Anchises. This parallels the relationships
between Odysseus and Circe and Odysseus and Calypso. The Ithacan,
however, wins the willing love of two goddesses, and he breaks off
his extended affairs with them, whereas Aphrodite is constrained,
by Zeus, to desire the Dardanian prince, whom she infatuates, then
leaves after a single bout of love-making.
Hymn No. 6 to Aphrodite attaches to the sex-goddess a series
of hapax epithets: xrysostçcanoj, Ñlikoblçcaroj, and glykymeålixoj.
Of these the middle one is the most interesting. The first,
“golden-crown", fits the conventional goldenness of the goddess'
person as well as that of her and her attendant Seasons' fashion accessories
in the poem's description of the group (ll. 7—13); while
her third epithet simply combines two ideas of pleasurable sensation,
roughly “sweet" (glyky-) plus “soothing" (meilix-). The Ñlikoblçcaroj,
“turned-eyebrow", compound, however, refers to the
physiognomic phenomenon of the goddess' seductive look, rather
than reaction in a viewer. Of course she does have an effect, even
in mortal disguise — upon awestruck Anchises, for example, in
Hymn No. 5 (ll. 84—91). This compound adds detail to elaborate
our view of her, adding to her lower-facial expression, her notorious
coy smiles. Eye contact, we might note out, is more important as a
bilateral interpersonal event than a smile, in fact, since a gorgeous
person can smile for everyone yet at no one, whereas a batted eye
meeting a lover's gaze is already inchoate intercourse, as many a
poet has known. The Iliad-poet remarked lovers' sweet talk; but this
epithet notes erotic glance and gaze.
The even briefer Hymn No. 10, “To Aphrodite" likewise situates
the seat and/or source of “desire" in the upper face: ñc' ímert~
… pros3p@.
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