Art and pragmatism of prayers in homer: some reflections in Yoruba prayers

Abstract

The Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer continue to reveal much about the socio-religious life of the Greeks. An aspect of this is the use of prayer in meeting human needs or desires. Parallels of pragmatic use of prayer are found in the Yoruba traditional religion which has some common approaches to worship with that of ancient Greek. This paper therefore engages in an extensive interpretive analysis of the phrasing of words in Homeric prayers in order to serve as a contrastive template for examining the Yoruba belief system. Three parts of the Homeric prayers: invocatio, hypomnesis and precatio are highlighted. The concept of reciprocity, as expressed by the formulaic expressions da qaiadedisti, da quiadedi and da at recipias are interrogated to underscore how humans make requests, seek aids and get emotional anchorage from the gods. The paper indicates that, while the use of prayer to cater for diverse human purposes is commonplace, the use of prayers in seeking vengeance, or personal glory/honour tends to be more prominent. Although it is noted that skilful ordering of phrases is not the sole determinant of whether a prayer will be answered or not, the paper highlights its key place in the two belief systems. More research can be done to determine the place of a mortal’s piety or impiety in guaranteeing favourable responses in both religions.