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 HymnsXXXIV. To Apollo · Lines 10–18

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XXXIV. To Apollo · Lines 10–18

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Ancient Greek

p. 124

XXXIV. ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝΟΣ

θυμίαμα μάνναν

κλῦθί μευ εὐχομένου λαῶν ὕπερ εὔφρονι θυμῷ·

τόνδε σὺ γὰρ λεύσσεις τὸν ἀπείριτον αἰθέρα πάντα

γαῖάν τ’ ὀλβιόμοιρον ὑπ’ αἰθέρι καὶ δι’ ἀμολγοῦ,

νυκτὸς ἐν ἡσυχίῃσιν ὑπ’ ἀστεροομμάτου ὄρφνης

ῥίζας νέρθε δέδορκας, ἔχεις δέ τε πείρατα κόσμου

παντός· σοὶ δ’ ἀρχή τε τελευτή τ’ ἐστὶ μέλουσα.

παντοθαλές, σὺ δὲ πάντα πόλον κιθάρῃ πολυκρέκτῳ

ἁρμόζεις, ὁτὲ μὲν νεάτης ἐπὶ τέρματα βαίνων,

ἄλλοτε δ’ αὖθ’ ὑπάτην, ποτὲ Δώριον ἐς διάκοσμον

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: XXXIV. To Apollo

p. 125

XXXIV. To Apollo

fumigation from manna

hear me as I pray for the peoples, with a kindly heart;

for you look upon all this boundless aither

and the earth of blessed lot beneath the aither, and through the dead of night,

and in the stillnesses of night, under the star-eyed gloom,

you look upon the roots below, and you hold the limits of the whole

kosmos; and the beginning and the end are your care.

All-blooming, and the whole pole with a many-struck lyre

you fit together, now going to the bounds of the nete,

now again to the hypate, now to the Dorian ordering

16–23.Apollo tunes the πόλος like a lyre — eight consecutive lines on one subject, matched for length only by Pan’s cosmology at XI.13–20. It is the only sustained musical technicality in the book, though not the only technical vocabulary: the Stars are given the seven planetary ζῶναι at VII.8 and Physis a run of Stoic terms at X.13, 26–27. νεάτη and ὑπάτη are left untranslated on purpose: the string called “uppermost” is the lowest in pitch and the one called “last” the highest, so rendering them “highest” and “lowest” inverts the music whichever way it is done. Abel’s plurals ὑπάτας and νεάταις at 22 are the technically correct ones — the Greater Perfect System has more than one of each — and are the best evidence that the poet knew the terminology.

16.κιθάρῃ πολυκρέκτῳ, and ἁρμόζεις in the next line. Pan was given the same act in the same verb at XI.6, ἁρμονίην κόσμοιο κρέκων φιλοπαίγμονι μολπῇ. The identification made explicit at 24–25 is prepared twenty-three hymns earlier by a shared word.

12.δι’ ἀμολγοῦ: the Homeric νυκτὸς ἀμολγῷ, of uncertain sense even in antiquity — the dead of night, or the milking hour. Abel takes ὑπ’ αἰθέρι from Wiel against the codices’ ὕπερθέ τε, so the line’s first half is an emendation.

15.σοὶ δ’ ἀρχή τε τελευτή τ’ ἐστὶ μέλουσα. The formula ἀρχὴ … τελευτή has been given to two gods already, in what is all but the same line: Ouranos at IV.2 and Zeus at XV.7, ἀρχὴ πάντων πάντων τε τελευτή, with only the first compound changed. Here it is Apollo’s, and phrased as a care rather than an identity — they are the beginning and the end; he attends to them.

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.