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 HymnsLXXIII. To the Daimon · Lines 1–9

Swipe or use the arrow keys.

Facing Pages · Branch 123 of 147

LXXIII. To the Daimon · Lines 1–9

Book Mode

Ancient Greek

p. 240

LXXIII. ΔΑΙΜΟΝΟΣ

θυμίαμα λίβανον

Δαίμονα κικλήσκω πελάσαι ἡγήτορα φρικτόν,

μειλίχιον Δία, παγγενέτην, βιοδώτορα θνητῶν,

Ζῆνα μέγαν, πολύπλαγκτον, ἀλάστορα, παμβασιλῆα,

πλουτοδότην, ὁπότ’ ἄν γε βρυάζων οἶκον ἐσέλθῃ,

ἔμπαλι δὲ ψύχοντα βίον θνητῶν πολυμόχθων·

ἐν σοὶ γὰρ κλῇδες λύπης τε χαρᾶς τ’ ὀχέονται.

τοιγάρ τοι, μάκαρ, ἁγνέ, πολύστονα κήδε’ ἐλάσσας,

ὅσσα βιοφθορίην πέμπει κατὰ γαῖαν ἅπασαν,

εὔδοξον βιοτῆς γλυκερὸν τέλος ἐσθλὸν ὀπάζοις.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: LXXIII. To the Daimon

p. 241

LXXIII. To the Daimon

fumigation from frankincense

I call upon the Daimon to draw near, the leader who makes men shudder,

gentle Zeus, all-begetter, giver of life to mortals,

great Zeus, much-wandering, avenging one, king of all,

giver of wealth, whenever he comes teeming into a house,

and again chilling the life of much-toiling mortals;

for in you the keys of grief and of joy are held.

Therefore, blessed one, holy, having driven off the cares of many groans,

all that send destruction of life over the whole earth,

may you grant a glorious, sweet and noble end to life.

Heading.ΔΑΙΜΟΝΟΣ, and the god addressed turns out in the second line to be Zeus. The hymn is to the δαίμων of a man or a house — the power that makes a life prosperous or wretched — and it names him μειλίχιος Ζεύς, Zeus the Gracious, a cult title borne by an underworld and wealth-giving Zeus in Attica and elsewhere. The edition transliterates Daimon in the heading and at line 1 because the hymn treats the word as a name, and translates the god's other titles.

1.The manuscripts have one word where the printed text has two. The codices read μεγαλανηγήτορα; Wiel divided it into πελάσαι ἡγήτορα, so that the infinitive to draw near and the noun leader are both got out of a single corrupt compound. Lennep and Hermann make the same kind of repair at LXX.9, three hymns back, where βλοσυροννύχιαι becomes βλοσυραί … νύχιαι. Two of this block's three worst-damaged lines are of one shape: an epithet-chain run together into a single word.

3.ἀλάστορα — the avenging one, or the accursed one. The noun ἀλάστωρ is used both of the avenging spirit and of the man it pursues, and the hymn puts it between much-wandering and king of all, in a chain otherwise made of benefits. The edition keeps the ambiguity and does not choose: the word is loaded, and the hymn does not say which way it is loaded.

6.The line is Wiel's arrangement. The codices read λύπης τε χαρᾶς κληῖδες ὀχοῦνται, which Abel prints as ἐν σοὶ γὰρ κλῇδες λύπης τε χαρᾶς τ’ ὀχέονται — a reordering, not a change of vocabulary. Note that Abel prints the contracted κλῇδες here while giving κληῖδας at XVIII.4, where Plouton holds the keys of all the earth, and at LVIII.4, where Eros holds the keys of all things; neither of those carries an apparatus entry. The key is one of the collection's recurring instruments of office, and this is the sixth holder of it: Hekate has the key of the whole kosmos at I.7, Prothyraia is κληδοῦχος at II.5, Proteus holds the keys of the sea at XXV.1, Plouton those of all the earth at XVIII.4, Eros those of all things at LVIII.4, and the Daimon here those of grief and joy. The first five carry no apparatus entry; this one does, since κληῖδες stands inside the phrase Wiel rearranged.

7, 9.πολύστονα is Slothouwer's for the codices' πολύσπορα, many-seeded: the manuscripts give cares that multiply, the printed text cares that groan. εὔδοξον at 9 is Hermann's for ἔνδοξον, which would mean much the same. The closing petition — a good end to life — is the collection's standard one; XI.22 asks ἀγαθὴν βιότοιο τελευτήν in almost these words, and LXIV.7 and LXVII.8 have βιοτῆς τέλος ἐσθλόν. XI.22's apparatus entry is on εὐιέροις, not on the phrase; here εὔδοξον, the line's first word, is Hermann's.

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.