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Attributed to Orpheus

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 HymnsLXXXV. To Hypnos · Lines 1–10

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LXXXV. To Hypnos · Lines 1–10

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Ancient Greek

p. 270

LXXXV. ΥΠΝΟΥ

θυμίαμα μετὰ μήκωνος

Ὕπνε, ἄναξ μακάρων πάντων θνητῶν τ’ ἀνθρώπων

καὶ πάντων ζῴων, ὁπόσα τρέφει εὐρεῖα χθών·

πάντων γὰρ κρατέεις μοῦνος καὶ πᾶσι προσέρχῃ

σώματα δεσμεύων ἐν ἀχαλκεύτοισι πέδῃσι.

λυσιμέριμνε, κόπων ἡδεῖαν ἔχων ἀνάπαυσιν

καὶ πάσης λύπης ἱερὸν παραμύθιον ἔρδων·

καὶ θανάτου μελέτην ἀπάγεις ψυχὰς διασώζων·

αὐτοκασίγνητος γὰρ ἔφυς Λήθης Θανάτου τε.

ἀλλά, μάκαρ, λίτομαί σε κεκραμένον ἡδὺν ἱκάνειν

σώζοντ’ εὐμενέως μύστας θείοισιν ἐπ’ ἔργοις.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: LXXXV. To Hypnos

p. 271

LXXXV. To Hypnos

fumigation with poppy

Hypnos, lord of all the blessed and of mortal men

and of all living things that the wide earth nourishes;

for you alone have power over all, and come to all,

binding bodies in fetters never forged of bronze.

looser of cares, holding a sweet rest from labours

and working a sacred consolation for every grief;

and you take the rehearsal of death away, keeping souls safe;

for you were born own brother to Lethe and to Thanatos.

But, blessed one, I beseech you to come tempered and sweet,

saving the initiates with favour at their divine works.

Rubric.θυμίαμα μετὰ μήκωνος, “fumigation with poppy”. This is the only rubric in the collection whose offering is expressed by a prepositional phrase; the other seventy-seven name their offering in the bare accusative after θυμίαμα, and the three that qualify it do so with καί or πλήν — XXVI, LIII, LXIX — never with μετά. It is also the only rubric to name a drug rather than a resin, a spice or a grain, and the match between the offering and the god is exact.

4.Abel closes line 4 with a full stop, not a comma — a round dot on the baseline with no tail, verified at 3.2× and 5.4× against the commas on the same page. The vocatives of line 5 therefore begin a new sentence after the opening address has run four lines, and the English follows. It is easy to read past, and the first transcription of this page did.

7.The manuscripts read ἐπάγεις: Sleep brings on the rehearsal of death. Wiel's ἀπάγεις makes him take it away. The line is a straight reversal of sense turning on one preposition, and Abel prints the reversal. Wiel carries thirty-six readings in this apparatus, third only to Hermann's two hundred and sixty and Abel's own hundred and thirty-two, and this edition has still not been able to identify him; see the Editorial Note.

7.θανάτου μελέτην, “the rehearsal of death”. The phrase is Plato's for philosophy (Phaedo 81a, μελέτη θανάτου) and is here used of sleep. Whether the hymn is quoting or the phrase was common by this date is not decidable from the text.

8.Lethe is named as a person only here. She has no hymn; she is asked away at LXXVII.10, where Mneme is to send forgetting off from the initiates. The collection therefore names her twice, once to banish her and once to make her Sleep's sister.

5.λυσιμέριμνε, “looser of cares”, of Nyx at III.6, of Hermes at XXVIII.6, of Artemis at XXXVI.5, and of Sleep here. The Night hymn also gives Nyx πόνων ἀνάπαυσιν; Sleep has κόπων ἀνάπαυσιν and the Zephyr breezes καμάτου ἀνάπαυσιν at LXXXI.2. Three rests from labour, and the third of them is an emendation (see LXXXI.2).

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.