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 HymnsLIII. To Amphietes · Lines 1–10

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LIII. To Amphietes · Lines 1–10

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p. 176

LIII. ΑΜΦΙΕΤΟΥΣ

θυμίαμα πάντα πλὴν λιβάνου, καὶ σπένδε γάλα

Ἀμφιετῆ καλέω Βάκχον, χθόνιον Διόνυσον,

ἐγρόμενον κούραις ἅμα νύμφαις εὐπλοκάμοισιν,

ὃς παρὰ Φερσεφόνης ἱεροῖσι δόμοισιν ἰαύων

κοιμίζει τριετῆρα χρόνον, Βακχήιον, ἁγνόν.

αὐτὸς δ’ ἡνίκα τὸν τριετῆ πάλι κῶμον ἐγείρῃς,

εἰς ὕμνον τρέπεαι σὺν ἐυζώνοισι τιθήναις

εὐάζων κινῶν τε χοροὺς ἐνὶ κυκλάσιν ὥραις.

ἀλλά, μάκαρ, χλοόκαρπε, κερασφόρε, κάρπιμε Βάκχε,

βαῖν’ ἐπὶ πάνθειον τελετὴν γανόωντι προσώπῳ

εὐιέροις καρποῖσι τελεσσιγόνοισι βρυάζων.

The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns: LIII. To Amphietes

p. 177

LIII. To Amphietes

fumigation from everything except frankincense, and pour a libation of milk

Amphietes I call, Bakchos, chthonic Dionysos,

waking along with the maiden nymphs of fair tresses,

who, sleeping at the sacred house of Phersephone,

puts the trieteric time to sleep, the Bacchic, the holy.

But whenever you yourself rouse the trieteric revel again,

you turn to a hymn with the fair-girdled foster-mothers,

crying euhoi and stirring the dances in the circling seasons.

But, blessed one, green-fruited, horn-bearing, fruitful Bakchos,

come to the rite of all the gods with a gleaming face,

teeming with well-hallowed fruits that bring to birth.

Rubric.θυμίαμα πάντα πλὴν λιβάνου, καὶ σπένδε γάλα — burn everything except frankincense, and pour a libation of milk. Exactly as long as Earth’s at XXVI, and the two of them are much the longest in the book; but this is the only rubric that prescribes a second act. Earth's at XXVI was the other exclusion (every seed except beans and aromatics); this one excludes the commonest offering in the book — λίβανον is prescribed at IV, XII, XXVIII, XXXVII, XXXVIII and XXXIX — and adds a libation, which no other hymn does.

3–5.The god sleeps and is woken. A biennial Dionysiac waking is a real institution: Plutarch, De Iside 35, has the Hosioi sacrifice in Apollo’s shrine at Delphi when the Thyiads rouse Liknites, and Pausanias 10.4.3 says the Thyiads keep their rites every other year. So ἐγρόμενον at 2 and ἐγείρῃς at 5 stand inside something attested. What is the hymn’s own is the rest of it: nothing outside these lines has the god sleeping at Persephone’s house, and the only ancient explanations of the τριετηρίς are different ones — Diodorus 4.3.2 makes it commemorate a three-year absence in India, 3.62 allegorises it to the vine. That the festival is the god’s sleeping and waking is this hymn’s account and a modern favourite; it should not be read back into the rest of the evidence. ἐγείρῃς is Hermann’s subjunctive for the codices’ optative, and with ἡνίκα it gives “whenever” — the iterative force the cult calendar needs.

1.Ἀμφιετής, of the year's round — the same idea as ἀμφιέτηρε at LII.10, one hymn back. Two consecutive Dionysos hymns are named from the festival cycle rather than from a place or a story.

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.

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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.