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 HymnsLXXVI. To the Mousai · Lines 7–12

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Ancient Greek Page · Branch 127 of 147

LXXVI. To the Mousai · Lines 7–12

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Ancient Greek

p. 248

LXXVI. ΜΟΥΣΩΝ

θυμίαμα λίβανον

αἳ τελετὰς θνητοῖς ἀνεδείξατε μυστιπολεύτους,

Κλειώ τ’ Εὐτέρπη τε Θάλειά τε Μελπομένη τε

Τερψιχόρη τ’ Ἐρατώ τε Πολύμνιά τ’ Οὐρανίη τε

Καλλιόπη σὺν μητρὶ καὶ Εὐνομίῃ θεᾷ ἁγνῇ.

ἀλλὰ μόλοιτε, θεαί, μύσταις, πολυποίκιλοι, ἁγναί,

εὐκλείην ζῆλόν τ’ ἐρατὸν πολύυμνον ἄγουσαι.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: LXXVI. To the Mousai

p. 249

LXXVI. To the Mousai

fumigation from frankincense

you who showed forth to mortals the rites that initiates perform,

Kleio and Euterpe and Thaleia and Melpomene

and Terpsichore and Erato and Polymnia and Ourania

and Kalliope, with your mother and with Eunomia, holy goddess.

But may you come, goddesses, to the initiates, ever-varied, holy,

bringing good fame and lovely emulation, much hymned.

LXXVI–LXXVII.The Mousai and their mother, in that order. The proem has them in the other order and in one breath: Μνημοσύνην τ’ ἐρατὴν Μούσας τ’ ἐπικέκλομαι ἁγνάς — and lovely Mnemosyne, and I summon the pure Mousai. The hymn-book separates them into consecutive hymns and gives them the same offering. The edition transliterates Mousai, as it transliterates Moirai rather than writing Fates.

10.Abel's Εὐνομίῃ replaces a word the collection uses six times elsewhere. The codices read εὐδυνάτῃ — and with the greatly able holy goddess — and Abel prints the proper name of one of the Horai. And the line's first three words are not new here either: Καλλιόπη σὺν μητρί stands at XXIV.12 — of the Nereids' rite, founded with Kalliope and her mother and Apollo — carrying no apparatus entry there or here. The mother that line leaves unnamed is the mother this catalogue supplies. The line is also the one place where this hymn leaves Hesiod. LXXVI.8–9 are Theogony 77–78 verbatim — Κλειώ τ’ Εὐτέρπη τε Θάλειά τε Μελπομένη τε | Τερψιχόρη τ’ Ἐρατώ τε Πολύμνιά τ’ Οὐρανίη τε — and Hesiod's next line begins Καλλιόπη, as this one does, and then goes its own way. Whatever stood in the tenth place, the hymn is here supplying an ending to a borrowed catalogue, which is exactly where a text is most likely to have been rewritten and most likely to have been corrupted. Abel's reason is presumably arithmetical: nine Muses have been named, the mother makes ten, and a tenth name leaves the line with a figure rather than an epithet. But εὐδύνατος is standing vocabulary here: it is Nike's at XXXIII.1, Plouton's at XXIX.20, the Kouretes' at XXXVIII.20, Leukothea's at LXXIV.2, Kronos's at LXXXIV.1 in the last hymn but four of the book, the mind's four lines above this one, and the reasoning's at LXXVII.5, and no apparatus entry anywhere falls on the word. The conjecture is not idle — Eunomia is named among the Horai at XLIII.2, and Εὐνομίη is the reading the editors removed from LX.2, where Schrader put Eurynome in its place — but the manuscript reading is not an error of the obvious kind, and the edition records that it is a conjecture.

7.τελετὰς … μυστιπολεύτους — rites celebrated with mysteries. The verbal adjective is passive (LSJ cites this very line), so the English says that initiates perform one step too freely; what the line asserts is simply that the rites are mystically solemnized. The claim that matters is carried by τελετὰς … ἀνεδείξατε: the Mousai are credited with showing initiation to mortals, which is not their classical business and is exactly what this collection's own association was doing. XXIV.10 has the same verb in the same tense and person — ὑμεῖς γὰρ πρῶται τελετὴν ἀνεδείξατε σεμνήν, of the Nereids — XXXVIII.6 credits the Kouretes of Samothrace with founding it, and LXXIX.8 credits Themis, πρώτη γὰρ τελετὰς ἁγίας θνητοῖς ἀνέφηνας. Four sets of gods, four aetiologies, no apparatus entry at any of the four, and no hymn aware of the others. XXXVIII.6 makes the same claim for the Kouretes — ὑμεῖς καὶ τελετὴν πρῶτοι μερόπεσσιν ἔθεσθε, you too were the first to establish the rite among men — in a line that carries no apparatus entry, as this one does not. Two sets of gods are each credited with founding the rite, and one of the two is called first. What is claimed here is the invention of the initiation, not of poetry.

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.