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 HymnsXXXVII. To the Titans · Lines 1–8

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XXXVII. To the Titans · Lines 1–8

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Ancient Greek

p. 134

XXXVII. ΤΙΤΑΝΩΝ

θυμίαμα λίβανον

Τιτῆνες, Γαίης τε καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀγλαὰ τέκνα,

ἡμετέρων πρόγονοι πατέρων, γαίης ὑπένερθεν

οἴκοις Ταρταρίοισι μυχῷ χθονὸς ἐνναίοντες,

ἀρχαὶ καὶ πηγαὶ πάντων θνητῶν πολυμόχθων,

εἰναλίων πτηνῶν τε καὶ οἳ χθόνα ναιετάουσιν·

ἐξ ὑμέων γὰρ πᾶσα πέλει γενεὴ κατὰ κόσμον.

ὑμᾶς κικλήσκω μῆνιν χαλεπὴν ἀποπέμπειν,

εἴ τις ἀπὸ χθονίων προγόνων οἴκοισι πελάσθη.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: XXXVII. To the Titans

p. 135

XXXVII. To the Titans

fumigation from frankincense

Titans, splendid children of Gaia and of Ouranos,

forefathers of our own fathers, beneath the earth

dwelling in Tartarean houses in the hollow of the ground,

beginnings and springs of all much-toiling mortals,

of the creatures of the sea, of the winged, and of those who dwell on land;

for from you comes every generation throughout the kosmos.

I call upon you to send harsh wrath away,

if anything from the ancestors below has come near the houses.

2, 4, 6.ἡμετέρων πρόγονοι πατέρων at 2 makes the Titans the ancestors of the human line. Lines 4–6 widen it rather than repeat it: ἀρχαὶ καὶ πηγαί of all mortals, sea-creatures, winged things and land animals alike, and πᾶσα γενεή. So the hymn gives a zoogony with a human genealogy inside it. The collection has flatter statements of human origin elsewhere — XXVII.7, III.1, VI.3, XXVI.1 — and what is distinctive here is not that the Titans are an origin but that the descent is made genealogical and then petitionary: it is the reason line 8 can ask them for something. No dismemberment, no Dionysos, no soot. The nearest ancient parallel is Dio Chrysostom, Or. 30.10–11, where men are made from the Titans’ blood with none of that apparatus either. Whether this hymn presupposes the fuller story is exactly the question at issue in the modern dispute about how early that story is attested, and the hymn is evidence for the descent, not for the story.

8.εἴ τις ἀπὸ χθονίων προγόνων οἴκοισι πελάσθη — ἀπό here is origin, not partitive: something that comes from the forefathers below, not one of them in person. The petition belongs to a known category. Plato, Phaedrus 244d–e, describes the greatest diseases and sufferings that arise in certain families ἐκ παλαιῶν μηνιμάτων, from ancient wraths, and says they are released by purifications and τελεταί — which is the shape of this hymn exactly: a rite, addressed to the ancestors, against what descends from them. The construction is Hermann’s; the codices read οἴκοις ἐπελάσθη.

1.Γαίης τε καὶ Οὐρανοῦ. Both parents have hymns of their own, Ouranos at IV and Earth at XXVI, and the genealogy is assembled across the book rather than told anywhere: IV.8 calls Ouranos Κρονότεκνε and the Earth hymn names no child at all. Τιτάν has been used five times before this hymn — Helios VIII.2, Herakles XII.1, Kronos XIII.2, Apollo XXXIV.3, and Τιτηνίς of Artemis XXXVI.2 — but only three of those are transfers of the name to gods outside the race: Kronos is a Titan, and Helios is a Titan’s son, named in the same line as Hyperion. This is the first hymn addressed to the Titans as such.

3.Ταρταρίοισι — Tartaros named, as at XVIII.2. The collection puts three things below the earth and keeps them distinct: Plouton’s realm, Tartaros, and here the Titans’ houses in the μυχός.

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.