Homeric Hymn 13: To Demeter
The shortest hymn in the entire collection — just 3 lines invoking Demeter and Persephone and asking the goddess to keep the city safe. A pure prooemial formula in miniature.
About the Poem
The thirteenth Homeric Hymn to Demeter is the shortest in the entire Homeric Hymn collection — just 3 lines. It stands in stark contrast to the great second Hymn, the 495-line narrative of Persephone’s abduction that founded the Eleusinian Mysteries. Hymn 13 is the prooemial distillation of that tradition: just enough to invoke the goddess, name her daughter, and ask for protection before a longer recitation begins.
The hymn’s request — “keep this city safe, and govern my song” — reveals its function: it was sung at a civic festival, by a poet beginning a public performance, asking Demeter both to protect the assembled community and to guide the poetry that follows. It is religion, civic duty, and artistic invocation compressed into three lines.
Complete Text
Greek (Homeric)
Δήμητρ’ ἠΰκομον σεμνὴν θεὸν ἄρχομ’ ἀείδειν, αὐτήν τε καὶ κούρην τε περικαλλέα Περσεφόνειαν· χαῖρε θεά, καὶ τήνδε σάω πόλιν· ἄρχε δ’ ἀοιδῆς.
(Full Greek text at Perseus Digital Library, link below.)
English (Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914 — public domain)
[1] I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess, of her and of her daughter lovely Persephone. Hail, goddess! Keep this city safe, and govern my song.
The Mother and the Daughter
The pairing of Demeter and Persephone — always together, always inseparable in Greek cult — is captured even in these three lines. The ancient Greek for “of her and of her daughter” (αὐτήν τε καὶ κούρην τε) uses the word κούρη (kourē, “girl, maiden”), the same word used throughout the great second Hymn, where Persephone is always called simply “the girl” before her abduction, and “the daughter” afterward. The use of Persephone’s full name here — a name considered powerful, almost taboo, in Eleusinian cult contexts — marks this as a formal invocation.
“Awful goddess” (σεμνήν) is one of Demeter’s primary epithets: she is the Semnai (the Reverend), commanding awe and dread. The same title was applied to the Erinyes (Furies) in their benevolent aspect — divinities of deep, archaic religious power.
Citations
- Evelyn-White, H. G. (trans.). Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Loeb Classical Library 57. Harvard University Press, 1914. Public domain. https://www.theoi.com/Text/HomericHymns3.html
- Foley, Helene P. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays. Princeton University Press, 1994.
- Clinton, Kevin. Myth and Cult: The Iconography of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Stockholm: Swedish Institute at Athens, 1992.
- Perseus Digital Library, Homeric Hymns (Greek text): http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0137:hymn=13