The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns

Name: The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns
Author: Attributed to Orpheus

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The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The HymnsLVIII. To Eros · Lines 1–10

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LVIII. To Eros · Lines 1–10

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Ancient Greek

p. 194

LVIII. ΕΡΩΤΟΣ

θυμίαμα ἀρώματα

Κικλήσκω μέγαν, ἁγνόν, ἐράσμιον, ἡδὺν Ἔρωτα,

τοξαλκῆ, πτερόεντα, πυρίβρομον, εὔδρομον ὁρμῇ,

συμπαίζοντα θεοῖς ἠδὲ θνητοῖς ἀνθρώποις,

εὐπάλαμον, διφυῆ, πάντων κληῖδας ἔχοντα,

αἰθέρος οὐρανίου, πόντου, χθονός, ἠδ’ ὅσα θνητοῖς

πνεύματα παντογένεθλα Ῥέα βόσκει χλοόκαρπος,

ἠδ’ ὅσα Τάρταρος εὐρὺς ἔχει πόντος θ’ ἁλίδουπος·

μοῦνος γὰρ τούτων πάντων οἴηκα κρατύνεις.

ἀλλά, μάκαρ, καθαραῖς γνώμαις μύστῃσι συνέρχου,

φαύλους δ’ ἐκτοπίους θ’ ὁρμὰς ἀπὸ τῶνδ’ ἀπόπεμπε.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: LVIII. To Eros

p. 195

LVIII. To Eros

fumigation from aromatics

I call on Eros the great, the holy, the lovely, the sweet,

strong with the bow, winged, fire-roaring, swift in his rush,

who plays together with gods and with mortal men,

deft of hand, of double nature, holding the keys of all:

of heavenly aither, of the deep, of earth, and of all the breaths

all-begetting, that green-fruited Rhea feeds for mortals,

and of all that wide Tartaros and the sea-loud deep contain;

for you alone hold the tiller of all these things.

But, blessed one, come to the initiates with undefiled purposes,

and send base and outlandish impulses away from them.

2.τοξουλκῆ? — the apparatus entry is a conjecture and a question mark, with no witness and no editor's name. Abel prints τοξαλκῆ, “strong with the bow”, and records his own hesitation: τοξουλκῆ would be “bow-drawing”. Elsewhere in this volume his apparatus reports what a codex has or what an editor proposed; here it reports a doubt. The other reading in the line is Hermann's: πυρίβρομον, fire-roaring, for the codices' πυρίδρομον, fire-running — one letter, and the difference between a noise and a motion.

4.διφυῆ, πάντων κληῖδας ἔχοντα. Two claims in one line. διφυής is the collection's standing word for a god of double nature — VI.1, XXX.2, XXXIX.5, and XLII.4, where it glosses the pair ἄρσενα καὶ θῆλυν; LVI.4, two hymns back, makes the same claim of Adonis with a pair of nouns instead. The second gives Eros the keys, the collection's image for a god who controls access to a whole region, and lines 5–7 then name the regions: aither, sea, earth, the breaths Rhea feeds, Tartaros, the sounding deep. Line 8 draws the conclusion in one metaphor of steering, οἴηκα κρατύνεις, you hold the tiller.

6.Ῥέα is Wiel's conjecture. The codices read θεά, “the goddess”, unnamed; χλοόκαρπος, green-fruited, would suit Demeter as readily. Naming Rhea here attaches the cosmology of this hymn to the Mother of the Gods, and the attachment is an editor's.

About This Reading Edition

The eighty-eight Orphic Hymns and the Prayer to Musaeus, in Ancient Greek and English, with the supplied critical apparatus, explanatory notes, introduction, glossary and editorial matter.

Historical Text and Translation

Orphic Hymns, attributed to Orpheus. Greek text after Eugenius Abel, Orphica (Leipzig and Prague, 1885), pages 57–102.

About Diotimos Editions

This historical edition credits Diotimos Editions as its English translator.

Rights

The ancient Greek source and the 1885 Abel edition are public-domain material. The supplied new English translation and editorial matter are published with the site owner’s authorization. Both supplied original files remain unchanged.