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 HymnsLXXX. To Boreas · Lines 1–6

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LXXX. To Boreas · Lines 1–6

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Ancient Greek

p. 260

LXXX. ΒΟΡΕΟΥ

θυμίαμα λίβανον

Χειμερίοις αὔρῃσι δονῶν βαθὺν ἠέρα κόσμου,

κρυμοπαγὲς Βορέα, χιονώδεος ἔλθ’ ἀπὸ Θρῄκης

λῦέ τε παννέφελον στάσιν ἠέρος ὑγροκελεύθου

ἰκμάσι ῥιπίζων νοτεραῖς ὀμβρηγενὲς ὕδωρ,

αἴθρια πάντα τιθείς, θαλερόμματον αἰθέρα τεύχων

ἀκτῖσιν λάμπουσαν ἐπὶ χθονὸς ἠελίοιο.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: LXXX. To Boreas

p. 261

LXXX. To Boreas

fumigation from frankincense

Shaking with wintry breezes the deep air of the kosmos,

frost-bound Boreas, come from snowy Thrace

and break the all-clouded stagnation of the watery-pathed air,

fanning with damp moisture the rain-born water,

making all things clear, working the aither blooming-eyed

that shines upon the earth with the rays of the sun.

LXXX–LXXXII.Three winds in a row, each of six or seven lines, each fumigated with frankincense: Boreas the north, Zephyros the west, Notos the south. The east wind, Euros, has no hymn. Nothing in the book explains the omission, and none of the three hymns names him. Three of four is the sort of gap that is usually put down to loss in transmission; there is no evidence here either way, and Abel's apparatus is silent.

1–2.The hymn is one sentence of six lines: an address in the participle, an imperative in the middle of line 2 (ἔλθ’ ἀπὸ Θρῄκης), a second at the head of line 3 (λῦε), and two participles closing. The English keeps the shape.

3.ὑγροκελεύθου, “watery-pathed”, belongs elsewhere to wet powers — the Clouds at XXI.3, Tethys at XXII.6, the Nereids at XXIV.2, the Nymphs at LI.14 — and is here given to the air. It returns three hymns later at LXXXIII.7, of Okeanos. Six occurrences in all, and this is the only one not of water.

4.The manuscripts read ῥιπίζων ἰκμάσι νοτεραῖς ὀμβριγενές; Abel prints the first two words in the other order and spells ὀμβρηγενές. Neither change is attributed, so both are his.

5.θαλερόμματον, “of blooming eye”, occurs nowhere else in the collection; θαλερός itself appears once, of Hera at proem 16. It is an epithet of the sky cleared by the north wind.

6.The manuscripts read ἀκτίνες ἃς, which is not construable; Hermann's ἀκτῖσιν repairs the line. This is the kind of place where the printed text of the collection is an editor's sentence, not a transmitted one.

6.The relative at the end of the entry is printed ἁς, with a rough breathing and no accent at all. Checked at 3.0× and again at 7.0×, with the compound rough-plus-acute of ὅρμοις and the lone rough breathing of ἡσυχίᾳ on neighbouring pages as controls: the mark here is the lone crescent, and the space to its right is blank. An accented ἃς or ἅς is what the sense wants, so a sort has been dropped; it is printed here as the page prints it. The register's ledger of wrong sorts holds seven, but those are all wrong letters; this is an omitted mark, and the second of those, after the missing smooth breathing of αγγελιῶτι at LXXVIII.3. The two lists are kept apart.

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.