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 HymnsXLI. To the Mother Antaia · Lines 1–10

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XLI. To the Mother Antaia · Lines 1–10

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Ancient Greek

p. 148

XLI. ΜΗΤΡΟΣ ΑΝΤΑΙΑΣ

θυμίαμα ἀρώματα

Ἀνταίη βασίλεια, θεά, πολυώνυμε μῆτερ

ἀθανάτων τε θεῶν ἠδὲ θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων,

ἥ ποτε μαστεύουσα πολυπλάγκτῳ ἐν ἀνίη

νηστείην κατέπαυσας Ἐλευσῖνος γυάλοισιν

ἦλθές τ’ εἰς Ἀίδην πρὸς ἀγαυὴν Φερσεφόνειαν

ἁγνὸν παῖδα Δυσαύλου ὁδηγητῆρα λαχοῦσα,

μηνυτῆρ’ ἁγίων λέκτρων χθονίου Διὸς ἁγνοῦ,

Εὐβουλῆα τεκοῦσα θεὰ θνητῆς ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης.

ἀλλά, θεά, λίτομαί σε, πολυλλίστη βασίλεια,

ἐλθεῖν εὐάντητον ἐπ’ εὐιέρῳ σέο μύστῃ.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: XLI. To the Mother Antaia

p. 149

XLI. To the Mother Antaia

fumigation from aromatics

Antaia queen, goddess, of many names mother

of the immortal gods and of mortal men,

you who once, searching in far-wandering grief,

broke your fast in the glens of Eleusis

and went to Hades, to noble Phersephoneia,

having got the holy child of Dysaules for your guide,

the revealer of the consecrated bed of holy chthonic Zeus,

and bore Eubouleus, a goddess under mortal necessity.

But, goddess, I beseech you, much-besought queen,

to come kindly met to this well-hallowed initiate of yours.

6.παῖδα Δυσαύλου. Dysaules belongs to the Eleusinian material outside the Homeric Hymn — Pausanias 1.14.3 makes Eubouleus and Triptolemos his sons, rewarded for telling Demeter where her daughter had gone; 2.14.2–4 makes him Keleus’ brother and the founder of the Phliasian mysteries. The name here is Hermann’s, made out of the codices’ δύσαγνος, in a line that otherwise reads παῖδ’ ἁγνὸν ὁδηγητῆρα λαβοῦσα. The conjecture is strong rather than merely possible: the next line calls him μηνυτήρ, which is the exact function Pausanias gives Eubouleus (μηνύω), and line 8 names Eubouleus outright. What is not attested is a child of Dysaules as a guide down: the sources make him the informant, and ὁδηγητήρ is this hymn’s own step.

4.νηστείην κατέπαυσας — she ended her fast. The fast is both a stage of the story (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 47–50 and 200–211, broken at Eleusis with the kykeon) and a stage of the rite (Clement, Protr. 2.21, “I fasted, I drank the kykeon”). It is not a named day of the Eleusinian celebration: ἡ Νηστεία is the middle day of the Thesmophoria, and the two festivals are often conflated. The hymn names Eleusis at 4 and Hades at 5 with no narrative between them.

8.Εὐβουλῆα τεκοῦσα θεὰ θνητῆς ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης — she bore Eubouleus, a goddess under mortal necessity. In Abel's printed text the name stands in six places — XXIX.8, XXX.6, here, XLII.2, LII.4 and LVI.3 — against Plouton's Εὔβουλος at XVIII.12. But three of the six are conjectures, this line among them: Abel's text here is his own, for the codices' εὔβουλον τέξασα, and θεά is Lobeck's for θεόν — so both the form of the name and the fact that a goddess bore him rest on editors. The same holds at XXX.6 (Pierson) and LVI.3 (Hermann). In the manuscripts the two words divide four to three the other way, and the tidy distinction between the two names is largely a nineteenth-century one.

Title.Ἀνταία is a cult title of the Mother, and Abel’s Ionic form of the codices’ ἀνταία. The collection has now addressed the Mother under four headings — Rhea (XIV), the Mother of the Gods (XXVII), Demeter of Eleusis (XL) and Antaia here — and this hymn makes her the mother of gods and men in its second line, as XXVII.7 did.

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.