From the book
The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns
Attributed to Orpheus · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordΒρύω presents abundance as active fullness: a person, place or power teems or flourishes.
- In the Orphic HymnsThe cosmic and vegetal instances illuminate one another.
- TranslationThe repeated English teeming usefully preserves the family resemblance among these passages.
- A place to readStars, rather than crops, supply Selene’s abundance.
- English renderings
- teem, abound, flourish
Meaning
Βρύω presents abundance as active fullness: a person, place or power teems or flourishes. A following dative often identifies what supplies that abundance, but the verb can also stand without an expressed complement. It should not be restricted to fruit or vegetation merely because several hymns give it that setting.
Use in the book
The cosmic and vegetal instances illuminate one another. Selene teems with beautiful stars (IX.7), Earth with fair seasons (XXVI.3), and Persephone with fruits (XXIX.10). A spring teems with the streams of Nymphs (XXII.8). The same verb makes these different kinds of fullness perceptible without asserting that stars, seasons, fruit and water are interchangeable substances.
Herakles supplies the decisive non-vegetal contrast: he abounds in mighty labours (XII.2), so the fullness is vigorous achievement rather than a crop. Adonis flourishes in the desired seasons (LVI.2), where the dative can locate the flourishing in time. In LII.13 the Dionysian god is simply asked to come teeming and welcome to the initiates. That unqualified use draws on the hymn’s abundant portrait without requiring the reader to add an unprinted object.
Places to read
- Hymn IX · Line 7Stars, rather than crops, supply Selene’s abundance.
- Hymn XXII · Line 8The spring’s fullness is flowing water.
- Hymn XII · Line 2Herakles abounds in labours, a contrast to vegetal readings.
- Hymn LII · Line 13The desired arrival carries abundance without an explicit object.
- Hymn LVI · Line 2Adonis’s flourishing is located in the longed-for seasons.
Translation
The repeated English teeming usefully preserves the family resemblance among these passages. It can, however, obscure the difference between abounding with something and flourishing in a season. Read each dative with its noun and setting. The related βρυάζω remains a separate lexical destination rather than being absorbed into this verb.
Attested forms
βρύουσα; βρυούσης; βρύων
Occurrence inventory
7 in total. IX.7; XII.2; XXII.8; XXVI.3; XXIX.10; LII.13; LVI.2