What the Hell is a Proem?

So. I'm guessing most of you have no idea what the hell Richard Hamilton is talking about. It is a sort of oddly structure article, which assumes the reader has a decent background in reading Hesiod's Theogony.

First you need to have read the Theogony by Hesiod. It helps to read it side by side with Hamilton's article.

Then, you should recognize that what Hamilton calls a proem is basically Hesiod's introduction, prologue, what have you for the Theogony. According to Hamilton the proem is the first 104 lines, go check 'em out. The first 21 lines make up the Helikonian proem and the rest make up the Olympian proem.

Compare some other proems (from Homer) and it might start to make more sense...

Iliad I.1-7 (trans. Richard Lattimore)
Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilles.

Odyssey I.1-10 (trans. Richard Lattimore)
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven
far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel.
Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of,
many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea,
struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions.
Even so he could not save his companions, hard though
he strove to; they were destroyed by their own wild recklessness,
fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios, the Sun God,
and he took away the day of their homecoming. From some point
here, goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak and begin our story.


What else? Notice that all three INVOKE the muses. Who are the muses? Check your lecture workbook and bring it to discussion tomorrow.

We'll talk about the rest tomorrow :)


Other links which might be helpful:

Perseus' Encyclopedia entry on Hesiod:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0004%3Aid%3Dhesiod

"The Proem of the Iliad" by James Redfield (Classical Philology)
http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-837X(197904)74%3A2%3C95%3ATPOTIH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q&cookieSet=1