Natural hymn

Use in the book

Menander places Parmenides and Empedocles beside Orphic compositions as examples of natural hymns. He illustrates the procedure by treating Apollo as the sun, Hera as air, and Zeus as the hot, then contrasts extended exposition with Plato’s concise reminders. This testimony shows that physical explanation and religious address could be read as a recognizable literary combination. It should not, however, become a universal key to Empedocles’ divine names. Menander supplies generic illustrations, while the separate testimonia on the roots preserve incompatible identifications. Nor does his classification prove that every Empedoclean poem was a hymn in the same sense. It is a later rhetorical account of how theological language can carry physical interpretation, and offers an alternative to criticism that excludes instructional verse from poetry altogether.

Places to read

1. A 22–A 23 (reception)Menander Rhetor. Defines the natural-hymn type and lists divine identifications as examples.
2. A 1 §§ 56–58 (biography)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 57. Names an attributed prelude to Apollo, relevant but not demonstrably identical with Menander’s example.

Translation in this edition

The edition treats the genre as an ordinary solution to the root-names and equates the Apollo reference with the burned prelude. Both are interpretations. The Greek does not resolve the Hera/Aidoneus dispute or authenticate the lost hymn’s contents.