The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns

Outline

By Abel's pages, following the collection's own joints — not the editorial blocks this edition was made in.

pp. 57–59 · The Prayer, and the crossroads

The Prayer to Musaeus, forty-four lines, one sentence from line 3, landing on the infinitive ἐλθεῖν. It names some fifty gods and asks them all to come — not every god the book will hymn, but enough to stand for all of them. Hymn I, To Hekate, ten lines. In the manuscripts the two run on without a break; Sanctamandus and Canterus first divided them, and Abel follows Hermann in keeping the division.

pp. 59–65 · The frame of the world (II–XI)

Prothyraia at the door, Nyx, Ouranos, Aither, Protogonos, the Stars, Helios, Selene — and then the two hymns about the whole, Physis and Pan, which say nearly the same thing twice.

pp. 65–72 · Titans, Olympians, and the sea (XII–XXVI)

Herakles-Chronos, Kronos, Rhea, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Plouton, and then Zeus twice more as the Thunderbolt and the Lightning; then the weather and the water — the Clouds, the Sea, Nereus, the Nereids, Proteus — and Earth.

pp. 72–79 · The Mother, and the Olympian centre (XXVII–XXXVIII)

The Mother of the Gods, Hermes, Phersephone, the first Dionysos, the first hymn to the Kouretes, Athena, Nike, Apollo, Leto, Artemis, the Titans, and the Kouretes a second time under the same name.

pp. 79–88 · The Bacchic centre (XXXIX–LV)

The longest continuous stretch of the book and the reason for it. Korybas, Demeter of Eleusis, the Mother Antaia, Mise, the Horai, Semele, and then Dionysos under a succession of names — Bassareus Trieterikos, Liknites, Perikionios, Sabazios, Lysios Lenaios, the God of the Trieteric Feast, Amphietes — with Hipta among them, and the Nymphs, Silenos and the Bakchai; closing on the twenty-eight lines to Aphrodite.

pp. 88–94 · Measure and judgement (LVI–LXIX)

Adonis, Chthonic Hermes, Eros, the Moirai, the Charites; then Nemesis, Dike, Dikaiosyne and Nomos — four hymns running on justice and law — then Ares, Hephaistos, Asklepios, Hygieia, and the Erinyes.

pp. 95–102 · The powers of the close (LXX–LXXXVII)

The Erinyes hymned again under their kindly name; Meilinoe, Tyche, the Daimon, Leukothea and Palaimon, the Mousai, Mnemosyne, the Dawn; Themis, the three winds, Okeanos, Hestia; and then Sleep, the Dream and Death, in that order, which is where the collection proper ends.

p. 102 · The hymn Hermann moved (LXXXVIII)

To Ares, seventeen lines, no fumigation rubric, printed under Abel's written protest. See the Editorial Note.