Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. As described in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Apollo slew the serpent and then spent eight years on leave, in order to. According to some ancient accounts, the Python protected the oracle of Gaia, the mother of the gods and first inhabitant of the site. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics Nicholas Richardson, Three Homeric Hymns: To Apollo, Hermes, and Aphrodite. The story of Apollo at Delphi begins with the gods conquest of the Python. The majority of the collection, including the longer hymns, dates from the C7th - C6th B.C. However they are now regarded as a largely anonymous collection of works. Greek writers assigned several authors including Homer, Pamphos (Hymn to Demeter), and Cynaethus of Chios (Hymn to Apollo). These examples reveal the complex temporalities involved in reperforming notionally one-time events, as an attempt to capture the ephemeral and collapse the present and the past (as well as the there and the not-there) in the ‘syncopated time’ of the reperformance. Three Homeric Hymns: To Apollo, Hermes, and Aphrodite. The dating and authorship of the Hymns is complex. Theorists and practitioners have in turn explored this paradox in relation to the restagings and re-enactments of one-time events and performances, such as battle re-enactments, the reconstruction of ballet choreographies before the days of film and live performance art. Research in performance studies has articulated a paradox at the heart of reperformance: since a performance is imagined as a singular event that exists only in that moment, and in a specific context, reperformance is an attempt to repeat the unique. While interest in reperformance is certainly not new, the debate is now increasingly taking place in dialogue with parallel studies of reperformance in other disciplines. Developing out of the now well-established ‘performative turn’ in studies of early Greek song, and gaining impetus from a series of publications focussing on the contextual specificity of archaic lyric and drama, those interested in reperformance ask what it means for a song or a play, composed for a specific occasion, to be reperformed in another time and (potentially) another place. Within Classics, there is growing interest in the nature of reperformance, particularly in relation to archaic and classical Greek poetry and drama.

Hymns to apollo