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 HymnsL. To Lysios Lenaios · Lines 1–10

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L. To Lysios Lenaios · Lines 1–10

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p. 166

L. ΛΥΣΙΟΥ ΛΗΝΑΙΟΥ

Κλῦθι, μάκαρ, Διὸς υἷ’, ἐπιλήνιε Βάκχε, διμῆτορ,

σπέρμα πολύμνηστον, πολυώνυμε, λύσιε δαῖμον,

κρυψίγονον μακάρων ἱερὸν θάλος, εὔιε Βάκχε,

εὐτραφές, εὔκαρπος, πολυγηθέα καρπὸν ἀέξων,

ῥήξιχθον, ληναῖε, μεγασθενές, αἰολόμορφε,

παυσίπονον θνητοῖσι φανεὶς ἄκος, ἱερὸν ἄνθος,

χάρμα βροτοῖς φιλάλυπον, ἐπάφιε, καλλιέθειρε,

λύσιε, θυρσομανές, βρόμι’, εὔιε, πᾶσιν ἐύφρον,

οἷς ἐθέλεις θνητῶν ἠδ’ ἀθανάτων σε πιφαύσκειν·

νῦν σε καλῶ μύστῃσι μολεῖν ἡδύν, φερέκαρπον.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: L. To Lysios Lenaios

p. 167

L. To Lysios Lenaios

(no fumigation named)

Hear, blessed son of Zeus, Bakchos of the wine-press, of two mothers,

much-remembered seed, of many names, loosener daimon,

hidden-born sacred shoot of the blessed ones, Euian Bakchos,

well-nourished, rich in fruit, making the gladdening fruit grow,

earth-breaker, of the wine-vat, greatly strong, of shifting form,

appearing to mortals as a toil-stopping remedy, a sacred flower,

a joy to mortals that loves what is free of grief, Epaphios, of fair hair,

loosener, thyrsos-maddened, Bromios, Euian, kindly to all,

to whomever of mortals and immortals you will to reveal yourself;

now I call you to come to the initiates, sweet, bringing fruit.

Title.The rule breaks here. Through XLVIII the hymns with no fumigation rubric were exactly the hymns headed irregularly, with ΕΙΣ or ΥΜΝΟΣ and a case instead of the bare genitive — I, XVIII, XXIX, XXXI, XLV. This hymn is headed ΛΥΣΙΟΥ ΛΗΝΑΙΟΥ, a bare double genitive in the regular form, and has no rubric; the heading ends in a full stop with nothing after it, checked at four diameters against the rubricated headings of XLIX above it and LI below. The implication still holds one way — every irregularly headed hymn lacks a rubric, and LV at the end of this block is another — but its converse does not, and the earlier notes that state the rule should be read with this hymn in view.

1.διμῆτορ. The lexica gloss διμήτωρ as twice-born, and the one ancient author who explains it — Diodorus 3.62.5 — makes the two births the vine’s: once when the plant is set in the ground, once when it comes into fruit. “Of two mothers”, Semele and the thigh of Zeus, is the modern gloss and the one this edition’s English follows; it is not what antiquity says the word means. Abel prints the lemma διμήτωρ flagged sic against the codices’ Doric διμάτωρ, while his own verse reads διμῆτορ — the first of three text-against-lemma mismatches in this block. The word returns at LII.9.

1, 5.ἐπιλήνιος and ληναῖος both from ληνός, the wine-vat. Ληναῖος is a standard title of the god; ἐπιλήνιος is an ordinary adjective of the vintage everywhere else and a divine epithet only here. With the title ΛΗΝΑΙΟΥ and the epithet at 5, the vat is named three times in ten lines. One caution: the derivation of the Athenian Lenaia from ληνός is contested — the rival derivation is from λῆναι, a word for the maenads, and the festival fell in January, months after the vintage. Within this collection the vat-sense is secure; the festival’s name is a separate question.

7.φιλάλυπον. The composition vowel decides the sense. Compounds of φίλος with a consonant-initial stem take -ο- (φιλόλυπος would be “grief-loving”, like φιλόθυρσος at LIV.11); φιλ-α- arises before a vowel, and the vowel here is the alpha privative of ἄλυπος. So the word is φίλος + ἄλυπος, loving what is free of grief — which is what χάρμα βροτοῖς wants, and very nearly a restatement of the toil-stopping remedy in the line above. Abel records no variant, and none is needed. (The first reading of this edition had φιλάλυπτον, with a tau that is not on the page, and built a note on the word being unlexicalised; see the corrections file.)

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.