Library › Greek: Epic › Hymn 11 To Athena
Guardian of cities is the theme of Hymn 11 To Athena, a brief Ancient Greek epic hymn from the Homeric collection. In a handful of hexameters the poet hails the dread goddess who with Ares cares for the works of war, the sack of cities and the battle cry, and who protects the people as they go out to fight and return home again.
The little hymn compresses Athena’s civic and martial character into a single prayer for safety and good fortune, the sort of prelude a rhapsode might sing before epic tales of war. It is a neat capsule of how archaic Greeks imagined their city-protecting goddess.
About this edition. The Greek text is that of the Perseus Digital Library. Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ).