Hymnic Ecology: An Ecocritical Reading of the Homeric Hymn to Pan

Hymnic Ecology: An Ecocritical Reading of the Homeric Hymn to Pan

Maynard, Matthew

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Greek and Latin

This dissertation presents a new study of Homeric Hymn 19, to Pan. I emphasize how this text, as the fullest literary treatment of Pan from the early period of the god's cult outside of its native Arcadia, is a crucial document to how Pan was regarded in the fifth and fourth centuries and to the nature of the praise he received from his worshipers. While several book-length discussions of the longer poems of the Homeric Hymns now exist, the shorter poems in the collection have received comparatively little attention. The first half of the dissertation offers a step in the direction of ameliorating this imbalance by providing for the Hymn to Pan the kind of detailed historical and literary analysis that others have carried out on the long hymns. Chapter One considers questions of the hymn's date, place of origin, and performative context, and Chapter Two takes the form of a commentary on the text of the hymn. The Hymn to Pan is remarkable for its indulgent and celebratory depiction of wilderness environments, an attitude some have felt to be generally lacking in the literature of the ancient Greeks. The second half of the dissertation uses ecocriticism to consider this aspect of the hymn. In Chapter Three I describe a careful organization observable in the poet's treatment of natural and constructed spaces that serves to invite reflection on the relationship between humans and the places of the earth that are hostile to human habitation. A fourth chapter turns to a discussion of how wilderness appears in other Homeric Hymns. I show that, while we often find engagement with ecological modes of thinking in hymnic compositions, the Hymn to Pan is unique among surviving hymns for its focalization of this theme and for the inseparable association it establishes between a god and his landscape.

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Committee: Sarah Iles Johnston (Advisor); Thomas Hawkins (Committee Member); Fritz Graf (Committee Member)