From the book
The Orphic Collection, Volume I: The Hymns
Attributed to Orpheus · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe plural name Eumenides presents its recipients under a favourable designation.
- In the Orphic HymnsAt LXX.1 the speaker asks the Eumenides to listen with a benevolent purpose.
- TranslationThe heading identifies the hymn as belonging to the Eumenides; the verse itself addresses them in the plural.
- A place to readRead the favourable address against the punitive descriptions that follow.
- English renderings
- Eumenides; favourable address to avenging powers
Meaning
The plural name Eumenides presents its recipients under a favourable designation. Its force is best understood beside the request for kindly counsel that immediately follows it, rather than as a simple description of uniformly gentle beings. The genitive Εὐμενίδων names the same collective when another goddess is called their mother.
Use in the book
At LXX.1 the speaker asks the Eumenides to listen with a benevolent purpose. Their hymn then gives this appeal its urgency: they observe irreverent lives, punish the unjust, and possess frightening eyes and destructive radiance. The favourable address does not cancel these powers. It asks that beings capable of punishment approach the present worshippers differently.
Persephone is their mother at XXIX.6. In their own hymn they are daughters of chthonic Zeus and Persephone. These local family statements connect the collective with under-earth sovereignty, but these passages do not supply a complete genealogy of every avenging goddess in Greek literature. The neighbouring hymn to the Erinyes supplies a useful comparison, not permission to erase the distinct headings and wording of the two compositions.
Places to read
- Hymn LXX · Line 1Read the favourable address against the punitive descriptions that follow.
- Hymn XXIX · Line 6The genitive names the collective whose mother Persephone is.
Translation
The heading identifies the hymn as belonging to the Eumenides; the verse itself addresses them in the plural. The English transliteration preserves the proper name but leaves its favourable colouring less audible than the accompanying phrase about kindly counsel. In LXX.4 the edition adopts plural address where the apparatus reports a singular construction, fitting the collective already named in line 1.
Attested forms
Εὐμενίδες; Εὐμενίδων
Occurrence inventory
2 in total. XXIX.6; LXX.1
Heading and incense rubric evidence
ΕΥΜΕΝΙΔΩΝ · LXX.heading. LXX. ΕΥΜΕΝΙΔΩΝ
Local sense
Eumenides collectively addressed
Other access forms
Εὐμενίς