The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns

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

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The HymnsLXVII. To Asklepios · Lines 1–8

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LXVII. To Asklepios · Lines 1–8

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Ancient Greek

p. 222

LXVII. ΑΣΚΛΗΠΙΟΥ

θυμίαμα μάνναν

Ἰητὴρ πάντων, Ἀσκληπιέ, δέσποτα Παιάν,

θέλγων ἀνθρώπων πολυαλγέα πήματα νούσων,

ἠπιόδωρε, κραταιέ, μόλοις κατάγων ὑγίειαν

καὶ παύων νούσους χαλεπὰς θανάτοιό τε κῆρας,

αὐξιθαλὲς κοῦρος καὶ ἀλεξίκακ’, ὀλβιόμοιρε,

Φοίβου Ἀπόλλωνος κρατερὸν θάλος, ἀγλαότιμον,

ἐχθρὲ νόσων, Ὑγίειαν ἔχων σύλλεκτρον ἀμεμφῆ,

ἐλθέ, μάκαρ, σωτήρ, βιοτῆς τέλος ἐσθλὸν ὀπάζων.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: LXVII. To Asklepios

p. 223

LXVII. To Asklepios

fumigation from manna

Healer of all, Asklepios, lord Paian,

charming away the much-aching torments of men's diseases,

giver of kindly gifts, mighty, may you come, bringing health down

and stopping harsh diseases and the dooms of death,

youth who swells the bloom and averter of evil, of blessed lot,

strong shoot of Phoibos Apollo, of splendid honour,

enemy of diseases, holding Hygieia as your blameless consort,

come, blessed one, saviour, granting a good end to life.

7, and LXVIII.Ὑγίειαν ἔχων σύλλεκτρον — holding Health as his consort. The next hymn is hers, and she is addressed there in her own right, as μῆτερ ἁπάντων and παμβασίλεια. The pairing is the collection's own ordering: the healer is given a wife in his last line but one, and the wife is given the following hymn. Everywhere else Hygieia is Asklepios' daughter — the Erythrai paean lists her among his children by Epione, and Pausanias 1.23.5 says legend calls her his daughter. So far as the sources go, this line is the consort tradition: not the rarer of two versions but the only witness to one.

5.Abel prints αὐξιθαλὲς κοῦρος καί, with a nominative κοῦρος standing inside a run of vocatives. His apparatus gives the codices' αὐξιθαλὴς κοῦρε, which is not regular either — there a nominative adjective stands beside a vocative noun, the mirror image of the fault. So Abel is doing two things: correcting the adjective to the vocative αὐξιθαλές, as he does at XIII.1, XXVI.3, XL.10 and LVI.6, and turning κοῦρε into κοῦρος καί. What survives the correction — a nominative among vocatives — is what the note records.

1.Ἰητὴρ πάντων … δέσποτα Παιάν. Παιάν is Apollo's healing title and here it is given to the son, five lines before line 6 names the father. The collection uses it of Apollo himself at XXXIV.1, and neither place carries an apparatus entry; this hymn does not remark on the overlap.

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.