Her Quakerism informs her translation methodology.

She has been a “convinced Friend,” or Quaker convert, since 1992. Sarah Ruden is a classically trained poet and translator. Notes and a Glossary of Names are included. Focusing on the longer Hymns, she perceptively illuminates these oddly charming and sometimes grave accounts of defining episodes in the evolution of the cosmos. Sheila Murnaghan's Introduction situates the Hymns within the mythological and performative traditions that gave rise to them. The result is a Homeric Hymns marked by its accuracy, simplicity, and economy of movement. In this translation of the Homeric Hymns, Sarah Ruden employs a melodious and flexible non-rhyming line of eleven syllables, offering a close approximation of Greek hexameter verse in natural English rhythms. This still places the older Homeric Hymns among the oldest monuments of Greek liiterature but although most of them were composed in the seventh and sixth centuries, a few may be Hellenistic and the Hymn to Ares might be a late pagan work. The oldest of the hymns were probably written in the seventh century BC, somewhat later than Hesiod and the usually accepted date for the writing down of the Homeric epics. While the modern scholarly consensus is that they were not written during the lifetime of Homer himself, they were uncritically attributed to him in antiquity. The hymns are 'Homeric' in the sense that they employ the same epic meter-dactylic hexameter-as the Iliad and Odyssey, use many similar formulas and are couched in the same dialect. The Homeric Hymns are a collection of thirty-three anonymous ancient Greek hymns celebrating individual gods.

Include in your reading also the other hymns dedicated to these gods and goddess, such as Hymns 7 and 26 to Dionysus. These are all Olympians, but each has an interesting history and cults that we could discuss. The first four hymns are addressed 'To Dionysus', 21 lines (fragments), 'To Demeter', 495 lines, 'To Apollo', 546 lines and 'To Hermes', 580 lines. We're following our Odyssey adventure with a reading of the Homeric Hymns (1+-4+), in the translation of Sarah Ruden (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005).

Homeric hymns to dionysus