This chapter examines the elusive notion of humour in Greek epic. According to Aristotle (Poetics 1448b24) it was Homer who, along with founding most other genres of literature, established ‘the schema of comedy’. Hosty begins by surveying our limited evidence for Homeric humour – both within the Iliad and Odyssey and in mysterious works like the Margites – and proceeds to examine the relationship between Greek epic and the humorous, analysing the potentially whimsical elements of the Epic Cycle, the wry domestic detail of Callimachus’ Hecale, the determinedly straight-faced pastiche of the Batrachomyomachia, and the gleeful absurdity of Lucian’s ‘prose epic’ the True Histories.

This chapter compares Philicus’ Demeter of ca. 275 BC (which, at the time of writing, I followed all scholars since Medea Norsa in classifying as a hymn) with the Delphic paeans of Philodamus (ca. 340 BC) and Limenius (between 128 and 108 BC). It argues that Philicus’ poem locates the exchange between Iambe and the Demeter not at Eleusis but at Prospalta, where a cult of Demeter and Persephone is attested, and that it may have proposed a role for that cult in the development of ritual αὶσχρολογία in Attica. The interest in Attic cults shown by a Corcyrean domiciled in Alexandria matches Callimachus’ decision to compose his very Attic Hecale. By contrast the Delphic paean of Philodamus is focussed chiefly on its place of performance and monumental inscription, albeit setting Dionysus’ arrival at Delphi, where he is be honoured alongside Apollo with cyclic choruses, in a wider geographical frame. Geography is important for the paean of Limenius too, offering a very Athenian version of Apollo’s reaching mainland Greece and proceeding to Delphi, a version appropriate for the Pythais from Athens by which we know it to have been performed.