The Bath of Pallas
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| by Callimachus | |
| Original title | Εἰς λουτρὰ τῆς Παλλάδος |
|---|---|
| Language | Ancient Greek |
| Series | Hymns |
| Subject(s) | Athena and Tiresias |
| Form | Hymn |
| Meter | Elegiac couplet |
| Lines | 142 |
| Preceded by | Hymn to Delos |
| Followed by | Hymn to Demeter |
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The Bath of Pallas (Script error: The function "langx" does not exist.), also translated as On the Bath of Pallas and commonly called the Hymn to Athena, is the fifth of the six surviving hymns by the Hellenistic Greek poet Callimachus.[1][2] Its 142 lines are written in literary Doric Greek and elegiac couplet, making it the only one of Callimachus's hymns not composed in dactylic hexameter.[3][4]
The poem presents preparations for a ritual bathing of Athena's cult image at Argos and places within this ceremonial frame the story of the accidental blinding of Tiresias, who sees the goddess bathing.[5] Its treatment of divine epiphany, forbidden vision, gender, and poetic authority has received extensive scholarly interpretation.[6][7]
Composition and ritual setting
The date of the hymn cannot be established securely, and the surviving evidence does not show whether it was performed at a historical festival, recited on another occasion, or intended principally for readers.[3][5] The poem belongs to the group of Callimachus's works usually described as mimetic hymns because its speaker talks as though a religious ceremony were occurring during the recitation.[7]
The unnamed speaker addresses the female attendants responsible for Athena's bath and repeatedly announces the goddess's approach. The ceremony is presented as an Argive custom in which Athena's wooden cult image is brought to the river Inachos for washing.[3] Richard Hunter argued that the vivid ritual frame does not prove the existence of a corresponding Argive festival and may instead be a literary construction designed to create the impression of an immediate ceremony.[8]
Synopsis
The hymn begins with a command for Athena's bath attendants to come forward after the speaker hears the goddess's sacred horses. The women are told not to bring perfume or a mirror because Athena rejects elaborate cosmetics and maintains her beauty through athletic exercise. The contrast is developed through the Judgement of Paris, during which Athena and Hera avoid mirrors while Aphrodite repeatedly arranges her hair. The attendants are instead instructed to provide olive oil of the kind used by Castor and Heracles, together with a golden comb.[9][10]
The procession includes the shield of Diomedes, while the cult image itself is to be carried without the inhabitants of Argos seeing it unclothed. The speaker warns male spectators to avoid looking at the goddess and begins a cautionary story while the procession approaches the river.[9][1]
In the embedded narrative, Athena and her favored companion, the nymph Chariclo, bathe at Hippocrene on Mount Helicon at midday. Chariclo's young son Tiresias, who is hunting nearby, reaches the spring and unintentionally sees Athena naked. He is immediately blinded, and Chariclo accuses the goddess of inflicting a disproportionate punishment upon an innocent child.[11][10]
Athena replies that Tiresias has not been deliberately punished by her because the laws governing encounters between mortals and gods cannot be revoked. She compares his fate with that of Actaeon, who will be torn apart by his own hounds after seeing Artemis bathing. Athena compensates Tiresias by granting him knowledge of the language of birds, exceptional powers of prophecy, a staff, lasting renown throughout Greece, and consciousness after death in the realm of Hades.[12][1]
The closing lines return to the ritual at Argive. Athena's arrival is announced, the attendants are ordered to receive her with cries of welcome, and the hymn ends with prayers for the protection of the city and the well-being of its people.[12][10]
Style and interpretation
Although written in elegiac couplets, the poem retains the principal elements of a Greek invocatory hymn, including calls to the deity, descriptions of divine attributes, recollection of the goddess's deeds, direct praise, and concluding prayer.[6] These elements are combined with ceremonial commands and narrative episodes, allowing the poem to move between the apparent present of the procession and the mythical past of Athena, Chariclo, and Tiresias.[3] Vision structures both the external ceremony and the embedded myth. The men of Argos are warned against seeing the cult image, Tiresias loses his sight after seeing Athena, and his physical blindness is compensated by prophetic understanding.[3] Athena is repeatedly said to be approaching the ceremony, but the poem never describes the moment at which she becomes visible. The anticipated epiphany is therefore produced through the speaker's language rather than through a narrated appearance of the goddess.[8][3]
The identity of the principal speaker remains deliberately unstable. Some expressions suggest a female participant with ceremonial authority, while the speaker's learned mythological commentary resembles the voice of a male scholar-poet.[7] This uncertainty has been connected with the hymn's presentation of Athena, whose feminine beauty is joined to athletic and martial qualities conventionally coded as masculine, and with the ambiguous status of Tiresias in Greek literary tradition.[7]
The story of Actaeon forms a parallel within Athena's account of Tiresias. Both young men see a bathing goddess without intending to violate a prohibition, but Tiresias receives compensating gifts while Actaeon's future punishment is death. The comparison shifts responsibility away from Athena's personal anger and toward an impersonal divine law governing encounters between gods and mortals.[6][8][13] [14]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Bulloch, Anthony W. (1985). Callimachus: The Fifth Hymn: The Bath of Pallas. Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries. 26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521264952. Search this book on
- ↑ "Каллимах" [Callimachus]. Большая российская энциклопедия (in русский). Retrieved 2026-08-05.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Schmitz, Thomas A. (2013). "Blindness and Insight in Argos: Narrators and Audiences in Callimachus' Fifth Hymn (The Bath of Pallas)". In Eisen, Ute E.; Möllendorff, Peter von. Über die Grenze: Metalepse in Text- und Bildmedien des Altertums. Narratologia. 39. Berlin: De Gruyter. pp. 174–193. doi:10.1515/9783110331721.174. Search this book on
- ↑ Μανακίδου, Φλώρα Π. (2013). Καλλίμαχος: Εἰς λουτρὰ τῆς Παλλάδος [Callimachus: To the Bath of Pallas] (in Ελληνικά). Athens: Δαίδαλος. Search this book on
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Stephens, Susan A. (2015). Callimachus: The Hymns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199783045. Search this book on
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Heath, John R. (1988). "The Blessings of Epiphany in Callimachus' Bath of Pallas". Classical Antiquity. 7 (1): 72–90. doi:10.2307/25010880. JSTOR 25010880.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Morrison, A. D. (2005). "Sexual Ambiguity and the Identity of the Narrator in Callimachus' Hymn to Athena". Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. 48 (1): 27–46. doi:10.1111/j.2041-5370.2005.tb00253.x.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Hunter, Richard (1992). "Writing the God: Form and Meaning in Callimachus, Hymn to Athena". Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici (29): 9–34. JSTOR 40236011.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "ΚΑΛΛΙΜΑΧΟΣ: Ὕμνοι — Εἰς λουτρὰ τῆς Παλλάδος" [Callimachus: Hymns — To the Bath of Pallas]. Μνημοσύνη: Ψηφιακή Βιβλιοθήκη της Αρχαίας Ελληνικής Γραμματείας (in Ελληνικά). Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας. Retrieved 2026-08-05.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Callimachus (1921). "Hymn 5: On the Bath of Pallas". Callimachus and Lycophron; Aratus. Loeb Classical Library. 129. Translated by Mair, A. W. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Retrieved 2026-08-05. Search this book on
- ↑ "ΚΑΛΛΙΜΑΧΟΣ: Ὕμνοι — Εἰς λουτρὰ τῆς Παλλάδος" [Callimachus: Hymns — To the Bath of Pallas]. Μνημοσύνη: Ψηφιακή Βιβλιοθήκη της Αρχαίας Ελληνικής Γραμματείας (in Ελληνικά). Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας. Retrieved 2026-08-05.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 "ΚΑΛΛΙΜΑΧΟΣ: Ὕμνοι — Εἰς λουτρὰ τῆς Παλλάδος" [Callimachus: Hymns — To the Bath of Pallas]. Μνημοσύνη: Ψηφιακή Βιβλιοθήκη της Αρχαίας Ελληνικής Γραμματείας (in Ελληνικά). Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας. Retrieved 2026-08-05.
- ↑ Callimachus (1823). Гимны Каллимаха Киринейскаго [Hymns of Callimachus of Cyrene] (in русский). Translated by Мартынов, Иван. Saint Petersburg: Типография Иос. Иоаннесова. Retrieved 2026-08-05. Search this book on
- ↑ Завьялова, В. П. (2009). Каллимах и его гимны [Callimachus and His Hymns] (in русский). Moscow: Греко-латинский кабинет Ю. А. Шичалина. ISBN 9785872451419. Retrieved 2026-08-05. Search this book on
Further reading
- McKay, Kenneth J. The Poet at Play: Kallimachos, The Bath of Pallas. Mnemosyne Supplement 6. Leiden: Brill, 1962.
- Μανακίδου, Φλώρα Π. Καλλίμαχος: Εἰς λουτρὰ τῆς Παλλάδος. Athens: Δαίδαλος, 2013. Script error: The function "in_lang" does not exist.
- Завьялова, В. П. Каллимах и его гимны. Moscow: Греко-латинский кабинет Ю. А. Шичалина, 2009. Script error: The function "in_lang" does not exist.
External links
- Ancient Greek text with a modern Greek translation at the Centre for the Greek Language
- Ancient Greek text and English translation by A. W. Mair at the Loeb Classical Library
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