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 HymnsLXXXII. To Notos · Lines 1–7

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LXXXII. To Notos · Lines 1–7

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Ancient Greek

p. 264

LXXXII. ΝΟΤΟΥ

θυμίαμα λίβανον

Λαιψηρὸν πήδημα δι’ ἠέρος ὑγροπόρευτον,

ὠκείαις πτερύγεσσι δονούμενον ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα,

ἔλθοις σὺν νεφέλαις νοτίαις, ὄμβροιο γενάρχα·

τοῦτο γὰρ ἐκ Διός ἐστι σέθεν γέρας ἠερόφοιτον,

ὀμβροτόκους νεφέλας ἐξ ἠέρος ἐς χθόνα πέμπειν.

τοιγάρ τοι λιτόμεσθα, μάκαρ, ἱεροῖσι χαρέντα

πέμπειν καρποτρόφους ὄμβρους ἐπὶ μητέρα γαῖαν.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: LXXXII. To Notos

p. 265

LXXXII. To Notos

fumigation from frankincense

Swift leap through the air, travelling on wet ways,

shaken this way and that on rapid wings,

may you come with the moist clouds, first father of rain;

for this is your air-walking prerogative from Zeus,

to send rain-bearing clouds from the air to the earth.

Therefore we entreat you, blessed one, glad in the sacred offerings,

to send fruit-nourishing rains upon mother earth.

1.The hymn addresses the wind as a leap — Λαιψηρὸν πήδημα, neuter — and keeps the neuter through line 2 before turning to the second person at line 3. The god is first a motion and only then a person. The English keeps the sequence; it is the clearest case in the collection of an abstraction addressed before the name that goes with it.

3.γενάρχης, “first father”, of rain. Notos is the wet southerly of the Aegean, and the hymn asks him for exactly what a farmer would.

4.ἠερόφοιτον, “walker in air”, one hymn after the Zephyr breezes are called ἠερόφοιτοι at LXXXI.1. It is not the one word the wind hymns share — ἠήρ itself stands in all three, and so does the aorist of ἔρχομαι — but it is the only uncommon one shared by two of them. Five occurrences in the collection: Nyx at III.9, Selene at IX.2, the Nymphs at LI.5, LXXXI.1, and here. Abel prints it three different ways in the verse — ἠεροφοίτοις at III.9, ἠεροφοῖτι at IX.2, ἠερόφοιτοι at LXXXI.1 — the same unsettledness of accent the sic entries record; see LXXXI.1.

LXXXII.One apparatus entry only, and it is an orthographic preference of Abel's (ἐς for εἰς), the same one he exercises at LXV.7. The block's readings run LXXIX 3, LXXX 6, LXXXI 7, LXXXII 1, LXXXIII 0, LXXXIV 7, LXXXV 2, LXXXVI 10, LXXXVII 4, LXXXVIII 0. Two hymns draw none at all, so this is the least emended of the eight that draw any.

7.This line is XXI.7 verbatim, the only whole verse the collection repeats — see the note there, which sets out how far the resemblance between the two hymns goes. Neither line carries an apparatus entry.

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.