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 HymnsLXI. Hymn to Nemesis · Lines 1–6

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LXI. Hymn to Nemesis · Lines 1–6

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Ancient Greek

p. 202

LXI. ΝΕΜΕΣΕΩΣ ΥΜΝΟΣ

Ὦ Νέμεσι, κλῄζω σε, θεά, βασίλεια μεγίστη,

πανδερκής, ἐσορῶσα βίον θνητῶν πολυφύλων·

ἀιδίη, πολύσεμνε, μόνη χαίρουσα δικαίοις,

ἀλλ’ ἔχθουσα λόγον πολυποίκιλον, ἄστατον αἰεί,

ἣν πάντες δεδίασι βροτοὶ ζυγὸν αὐχένι θέντες·

σοὶ γὰρ ἀεὶ γνώμη πάντων μέλει, οὐδέ σε λήθει

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: LXI. Hymn to Nemesis

p. 203

LXI. Hymn to Nemesis

(no fumigation named)

O Nemesis, I call you, goddess, greatest queen,

all-seeing, looking upon the life of mortals of many tribes;

everlasting, most august, who alone rejoice in the just,

but hate a speech of many colours, never standing still,

whom all mortals fear, setting the yoke upon the neck;

for the purpose of all is ever your care, nor does it escape you,

2.πολυφύλων, of many tribes, is what Abel prints; his apparatus reports that the codices give πολυθρύ(λ)λων — much talked-of — or else a word he can read only as far as πολυ, which he marks with four dots. This is the clearest case in the block of a reading recovered from an illegible place rather than from a variant. LXII.3 has the same three words in the same position of the line, βίον θνητῶν πολυφύλων, and there they are transmitted.

3.ἀιδίη, πολύσεμνε — the same two words, in the same order and the same metrical place, open XXVI.6, of Earth. But at XXVI.6 both of them are editorial: Abel's apparatus there reads ἀιδίη Hermann] ἀιδία and πολύσεμνε Abel] πολύσεπτε, and here ἀιδίη is again Hermann's for ἀιδία. What the two lines share in the printed text, the manuscripts do not share; the correspondence is largely the editors'.

5.δεδίασι is Pierson's. The codices' δεδάασι is a perfect of the defective root δα- (δαῆναι, “to learn”, cognate with διδάσκω but not the same verb), which would make mortals learn Nemesis rather than fear her; with two letters between the forms and the line's sense demanding fear, it is more likely a corruption than a rival reading. The conjecturer is Johannes Pierson (1731–1759), the Dutch editor of Moeris, who has ten entries in this apparatus in all, the first at III.6. ζυγὸν αὐχένι θέντες: the participle agrees with βροτοί, so it is the mortals who do the placing — the Greek says only “setting the yoke on the neck”, and whose neck is an inference, though a natural one; lines 6–7 then locate her jurisdiction in the mind rather than in the act.

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.