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Attributed to Orpheus

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 HymnsXXXIX. To Korybas · Lines 1–10

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XXXIX. To Korybas · Lines 1–10

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Ancient Greek

p. 142

XXXIX. ΚΟΡΥΒΑΝΤΟΣ

θυμίαμα λίβανον

Κικλήσκω χθονὸς ἀενάου βασιλῆα μέγιστον,

Κύρβαντ’ ὀλβιόμοιρον, Ἀρήιον, ἀπροσόρατον,

νυκτερινὸν Κουρῆτα, φόβων ἀποπαύστορα δεινῶν,

φαντασιῶν ἐπαρωγόν, ἐρημοπλάνον Κορύβαντα,

αἰολόμορφον ἄνακτα, θεὸν διφυῆ, πολύμορφον,

φοίνιον, αἱμαχθέντα κασιγνήτων ὑπὸ δισσῶν,

Δηοῦς ὃς γνώμῃσιν ἐνήλλαξας δέμας ἁγνόν,

θηρότυπον θέμενος μορφὴν δνοφεροῖο δράκοντος·

κλῦθι, μάκαρ, φωνῶν, χαλεπὴν δ’ ἀποπέμπεο μῆνιν,

παύων φαντασίας ψυχῆς ἐκπλήκτου, ἀνάγνου.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: XXXIX. To Korybas

p. 143

XXXIX. To Korybas

fumigation from frankincense

I call upon the greatest king of the everflowing earth,

Kyrbas of blessed lot, warlike, not to be looked upon,

the Koures of the night, stayer of dreadful fears,

helper of phantasms, waste-wandering Korybas,

lord of shifting form, twofold god, of many forms,

bloody, bloodied by two brothers,

you who by Deo’s purposes changed your holy body,

putting on the beast-moulded form of a dark serpent;

hear these voices, blessed one, and send harsh wrath away,

stilling the phantasms of a stricken and unholy soul.

4, 10.φαντασιῶν ἐπαρωγόν at 4, and at 10 the petition to stop φαντασίας. ἐπαρωγός takes a dative of the party helped — as it does at XLVIII.6 in this same block, ἐπαρωγὸς … μυστιπόλοισιν — and a genitive of what it furthers, never of what it helps against. So the god is called the ally of the phantasms at 4 and asked to end them at 10, exactly as at 9 he is asked to send away a wrath that is his own. Pan is built the same way at XI.7, φαντασιῶν ἐπαρωγέ φόβων τ’ ἔκπαγλε, where he is plainly the sender of the panic and not its cure. The whole petition of this hymn is withdraw what is yours.

6.αἱμαχθέντα κασιγνήτων ὑπὸ δισσῶν — bloodied by two brothers. The story is real: Clement, Protrepticus 2.19, has two of the Korybantes kill a third who was their brother, cover his head with a purple cloth and carry him to the skirts of Olympos. Clement does not name the victim, and the one named Korybas in ancient sources — Diodorus 5.49, son of Iasion and Kybele — is not killed; so the identification of this hymn’s addressee with Clement’s murdered brother is the editors’, not antiquity’s. Killing is done elsewhere in the collection — XXIX.16, XXXII.12, XXXVIII.14 — but this is so far the only place where the god being addressed is himself the one killed.

7–8.Deo changes his body into a serpent’s — and the next hymn in the book is to Demeter, and the one after that to the Mother who searched for her daughter. XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL and XLI stand in a chain: the Kouretes, one of them, Demeter at Eleusis, and the Mother’s search.

5.θεὸν διφυῆ. The fifth deity in the collection given a double nature, after Protogonos at VI.1, Selene at IX.4, Dionysos at XXX.2 and Athena at XXXII.10; Mise makes a sixth three hymns later at XLII.4. As in every other case, no reason is given.

10, and the apparatus.Abel files his last entry on this hymn under line 11, and his own page contradicts him: the marginal numeral 10 stands against this very line, four inches above the apparatus. Six lines on p. 79, four on p. 80, the next heading immediately after — the hymn has ten, the numeral in the apparatus is an error, and nothing has been lost. Worth adding that the word the entry is about, ἀνάγνου, is Wiel’s for the codices’ ἀνάγκης: with the manuscripts the soul is stricken by necessity rather than unclean, and the closing line means something else.

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.