The Orphic Hymns

by Unknown

  Worship of Hermes tended to be domestic and personal; for details, see Burkert 1985, pp. 156–159, and Larson 2007, pp. 144–150. He seems to have had only a small role in Orphism, at least as far as can be deduced from the little said about him in our extant sources. His role as guide of the dead, which one would figure to be of particular interest in Orphic cults, is highlighted in our collection by a separate hymn to Chthonic Hermes, who seems to have become a separate entity (see OH 57i). Our hymn here, though, is quite traditional in the various attributes it lists, although it is not by any means comprehensive. There is a particular emphasis on Hermes as the god of language. This is understandable in a body of work whose main interest lies in convincing deities through the use of language to be favorable and propitious. It is notable that the rustic side of the god does not appear at all; this may be taken as circumstantial evidence that the cult for which the Orphic Hymns were composed was purely an urban one.

  The placement of this hymn is curious at first blush. OH 15–27 are structured along the lines of the four elements, and the following hymn to Persephone would seem also to belong to this pattern, in as much as she is associated with earth (cf. OH 29.4, 6, 17). We might then expect this hymn to stress the chthonic side to Hermes, which it clearly does not do, despite his being called “lord of the deceased” in line 2; instead, the hymn to Chthonic Hermes has that function. However, as already mentioned, Hermes is a figure who negotiates transitions, and it seems this hymn performs the same duty. It serves as a dramatic pause, setting off the next two hymns to Persephone and Dionysos, who of course are divinities of the utmost importance for the initiates. Their hymns begin the central portion of the collection, focusing on the birth of Dionysos and Dionysian cult.

  1 son of Maia: The traditional genealogy of Hermes makes him the son of Zeus and Maia, a daughter of Atlas; for details see both of the Homeric Hymns to Hermes (no. 4.1–19 and no. 18). Chthonic Hermes in our collection has a completely different parentage (see OH 57.3–5+n).

  2 judge of contests: This epithet appears in Greek literature applied to Hermes, the earliest witnesses being a fragment of Simonides (PMG 555) and Pindar Pythian Odes 2.10. The original context of the Simonides fragment is unknown, but the Pindar citation comes from a victory ode celebrating the victor’s winning of a chariot race. The “contests” in our hymn may only be limited to athletic contests, something that is within the domain of Hermes, or refer to any contest in general, given that Hermes is also a god of good fortune. If there were contests involved in the ritual during which our hymns were sung, then the epithet might have a more immediate significance, especially if these contests involved some kind of speech (see OH 7.12–13n; for athletic contests as a metaphor, see OH 87.12n).

  3 Argeiphontes: This epithet of Hermes has been understood as “slayer of Argos” in antiquity and in modern times, referring to Hermes’ exploit in freeing Io from this multi-eyed giant who guarded her. However, this interpretation has been questioned and “slayer of dogs” has been offered as another possibility. For a technical discussion, see West 1978, pp. 368–369. Both explanations portray Hermes in his guise as the god of thieves, who often need to dispatch guards, whether watchmen or watchdogs.

  6 interpreter of all: The word “interpreter” in Greek is “hermēneus,” and there is an intentional play on the name Hermes (also in Orphic fragment 413.1). The word and name do not appear to be etymologically related, however. See also Plato Cratylus 407e–408b (and note the pun on Hermogenes’ name!).

  8 lord of Korykos: Korykos is the southern promontory of the Erythraian peninsula in Kilikia. The mountain most frequently connected with Hermes is the one where he was born, Kyllene in Arkadia. That he is the “lord of Korykos” and not “lord of Kyllene” in this hymn may be due to the location of the cult in Asia Minor, where Korykos would have been more familiar than Kyllene (and thus possibly would have been a place of more emotional attachment for the initiates).

  10: The ancient Greeks certainly realized that speech could be used for good or ill. The ambiguity can be seen in the portrayal of Odysseus, the skillful speaker par excellence. His gift with language saves him from the Kyklops Polyphemos. But there are also failures, such as his unsuccessful embassies to the Trojans and to Akhilleus, and the speech that wins him the arms of Akhilleus in turn leads to the death of the great warrior Aias. More to the point, it is Hermes who endows Pandora, that bane for mankind, with language, which allows her to wheedle and lie (Hesiod Works and Days 77–82).

  29. Hymn to Persephone

  Persephone was called Phersephone and P(h)ersephoneia by the poets, Pherrephatta by the Athenians, and Proserpina by the Romans. However, she is often merely known as Kore (“maid”). She is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter already in Hesiod (Theogony 912–914). Orphism adopts this genealogy but also at times equated Demeter with Rhea, the mother of Zeus (see OH 27i); she flees the advances of her son by turning herself into a snake, but he does so as well and eventually mates with her (see also OH 40i). The story repeats itself in the case of Persephone. She, too, is pursued by Zeus who again takes the form of a snake (Clement of Alexandria Protrepticus 2.16.1). Their offspring is Dionysos, and this might have produced Melinoe as well (see OH 71i). The most important myth involving Persephone is her abduction by Hades, the most famous version of which is found in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter; for a summary, see OH 41i. There was at least one Orphic version as well. She is usually closely associated with her mother in cult, in which fertility and other aspects of a woman’s life receive emphasis, particularly marriage. For an overview of important cults, see Larson 2007, pp. 69–85. Her connection with the underworld and Dionysos is particularly important to Orphism. She frequently appears on the Bacchic gold tablets. A few short ones merely convey greetings to her (nos. 15, 17, 31, 37). In others the initiate appeals to her for their reward in the afterlife for which their initiation into the cult had prepared them, and there is sometimes an allusion to the initiate’s guilt inherited from his Titan forbears who killed Dionysos, Persephone’s son (nos. 5–7, 9, 26a, b; cf. no. 8). In one tablet, the initiate is assured to reach the “holy meadows and groves of Persephone” (no. 3). For an analysis of these tablets, see Graf/Johnston 2007, pp. 66–164; see also OH 18.2n and OH 87.12n. We also find the chthonic connection of Persephone stressed in the magical papyri through her thorough identification with other goddesses. There she is identified with Moon, Hekate, and Artemis (see further OH 1i and OH 59.3–4n). In our hymn both sides of Persephone are addressed. She is a fertility goddess, due to her connection both to Demeter and Hades, who, although the lord of the dead, nevertheless has a connection with life in that he can be seen as the one who sends up crops and other growing things from his realm under the earth (see OH 18i). His abduction of Persephone and her reunification with Demeter, and the consequent compromise between the two over her, was interpreted by the Greeks as symbolizing the cycle of growth: the seed is sown under the earth, where it lies dormant throughout the winter until its fruit miraculously reappears in the spring (but see Burkert 1985, p. 160, for another interpretation). Yet, through her marriage to Hades, Persephone is the queen of the dead. Their relationship had a rough beginning, and she can even have a sinister side. Odysseus fears that she might send up a ghost or monster to vex him during his visit to the land of the dead (Odyssey 11.633–635); see also OH 71.4–5+n. It is perhaps for this reason that the poet has omitted the more unsavory details of her birth and abduction (as in the case of her mother in OH 40). This hymn together with the following one to Dionysos forms a mother-son pair; for other similar collocations, see OH 14.8–9n.

  1 sole offspring: As in Orphic fragment 294. Demeter also bears this epithet; see OH 40.16+n. It is used of Hekate in Hesiod Theogony 426, a goddess who sometimes is identified with Persephone. This might be one of the reasons why the source of Apollodoros made Styx, and not Demeter, the mother of Persephone (Apollodoros 1.3.1).

  4 the gates of Hades: Compare OH 18.4, where Pl
outon is said to hold the keys to Hades.

  5 Praxidike: The name means “exacter of justice.” Pausanias tells us that a group of goddesses called Praxidikai were worshipped at Haliartos (9.33.3). The Orphic Argnonautika mentions the “mysteries of Praxidike” (31) without further elaboration.

  6 mother of the Erinyes: In Orphic myth, the Erinyes are the children of Persephone and Hades (sometimes Apollon); see OH 70.2–3n. Once in the magical papyri it seems that Persephone is the name of one of the Erinyes; see OH 69.1n. In our collection, she is also implied to be the mother of Adonis (see OH 56.8–9+n) and Melinoe, although the allusion to the story of the latter’s birth is obscure (see OH 71.4–5+n).

  7–8: Eubouleus (“good counsel”) is a name applied to different divinities (see OH 41.8n), but here it refers to Dionysos. The epithet “loud roaring” is characteristic of the god. In the next hymn, he is also described as “loud roaring” (OH 30.1+n), and he was often called Bromios (Roarer), as in OH 40.10. Our composer here euphemistically summarizes the doublet of Persephone and Dionysos’ birth in Orphic myth, as he does in the following hymn. No mention is made of snakes or rape.

  9–11 radiant and luminous... brilliant and horned: When Demeter gives birth to Persephone, the infant has an extra pair of eyes on her forehead and horns, and the mother flees in terror at the sight (see OH 14i). This line might be alluding to an identification with Moon, who is often portrayed as bright and horned (OH 9.1–2). As mentioned in the introduction to this hymn, Persephone was identified with the moon goddess, and in later antiquity the phases of the moon were associated with her split existence between the land of the living and the land of the dead (see Richardson 1974, p. 285).

  9 playmate of the Seasons: In their hymn, the Seasons are described as playmates of Persephone (OH 43.7+i).

  12–14: The poet subtly glides between Persephone as a person and Persephone as the fruits of the earth itself; the same effect is used with Dionysos and the grape (see OH 50.5+n). In the Orphic version of Persephone’s abduction, she is weaving a robe of flowers when Hades appears (Orphic fragment 288). The pointed contrast between spring and autumn is mirrored in the life-death imagery in lines 15–16.

  15–16: As is often the case, a god has control over opposites. Many fertility goddesses double as death goddesses; see OH 26.2+n. The Greek in line 16 contains an etymologizing play on words: “Phersephonē pherbeis … kai … phoneueis” (“Persephone, you nourish … and … kill”). Hekate is called the “all-nourisher” in the magical papyri (PGM 4.2749) shortly after she is addressed as Persephone (4.2747). The Stoic philosopher Kleanthes is reported to have made a similar play on words: he equated Phersephonē with warm air (“pneuma”) that is carried (“pheromenon”) through crops and is killed (“phoneumenon”).

  19 a splendid old age to him who is sailing: This refers to the crossing of a river on Charon’s ferry in the underworld in order to reach Hades proper. For interpretation of “old age,” see OH 87.12n.

  30. To Dionysos

  Dionysos is a very difficult divinity to define—and one suspects that this is exactly how he would want it to be. He is a god of vegetation, particularly of the creeping vine (see lines 4–5). He is a god of liquid fertility: the catalyst that initiates the process of growth, the vital force that sustains it, and the fluid nourishment that flows from it. Semen, blood, water, wine, honey, milk—Dionysos is all of this. His very essence is a fluidity that is at once defined and undefined. At his roots, he is a god of transitions, but in order for there to be a transition, there must be a point A and a point B between which a transition exists. Dionysos swings between these extremes. At any moment, the god can move from one to the next. He is a god of opposites: peaceful and warlike, human and animal, sober and drunk, alive and dead, sacred and profane. Dionysos blurs the lines. There are many Greek gods who oversee conflicting spheres, such as Apollon, the god of medicine and disease. Yet none are so thoroughly defined by the juxtaposition of opposites as Dionysos. The Hymns themselves teem with paradox and contradiction. Even more, they seem to embrace it, to actively present the conflict wherever possible. This frequently occurs at the verbal level and expands to include the addressed divinities themselves. Identities are spliced (e.g., the Erinyes and Eumenides); entities are merged (e.g., Okeanids and the Nymphs). The Dionysian spirit lurks behind this, too. A crucial element of his worship is the process which the Greeks called enthousiasmos, “the god inside” (whence English “enthusiasm”), the belief that the god enters into the worshippers and possesses them (see further OH 50i), which leads to a state of ekstasis, “a standing out (of oneself)” (whence English “ecstasy”). To a degree unmatched by other divinities, Dionysos is with his followers (cf. OH 32i). The effacing of the distinction between divine and human, the strange encounter where someone at the same time is somehow both himself and not himself, coheres perfectly with the transitional nature of the god himself. In the Hymns, religious experience becomes poetic strategy. The various hymns are not merely words to be mechanically recited. It is in their performance that they find their ultimate fulfillment. Through this (and the other ritual acts), the Dionysian spirit was evoked, made manifest, and entered into the very breath of the initiates—an enthousiasmos of language that transported the worshippers, however briefly, beyond their quotidian existence and allowed them to touch the divine. This is the key to understanding the whole collection (see also the introduction to the translation). In one respect, then, performing the Hymns enables one, in essence, to become the god (see also OH 33i and OH 52i). The initiation ritual mirrors Dionysos: as the god is ripped apart by the Titans and is born again, so, too, the initiates, blasted by the vagaries of life, are reborn through initiation into something pure and holy. And just as the pieces of the murdered divine child must be gathered and reconstituted anew, so the initiates, in performing the Hymns where the details of cultic myth and eschatology are scattered in obscure allusions but subtly linked through a complex web of shared and similar epithets and descriptions, reconstitute the esoteric knowledge that leads to a revelation of the secrets of life and death. The learned contests we find mentioned sporadically in the collection might be understood in this light; see OH 7.12–13n. Yet encounter with the divine is fraught with peril. The frenetic invocations of various deities to appear, coupled with the uncertainty as to how they will react to being so summoned, lead to anxieties. Thus the initiates repeatedly call on figures to come kindly disposed and a few times even explicitly request the more dangerous ones to dispel the madness they bring (see OH 71.11n).

  This hymn is the first of many that address Dionysos. Coming as it does after the hymn to Persephone, who is (one of) his mother(s) (see note to line 2 below), it functions in a sense as the birth of Dionysos, and in many ways it culminates the series of divinities addressed in the previous hymns. His birth is the moment the entire universe has been anticipating. This initial hymn is followed by figures who play a role in the god’s early years (see OH 32i). Starting with OH 40, the collection moves away from cosmology and mythology to a decided emphasis on cultic practice. This reaches its climax through a number of hymns dedicated to different cultic identities of Dionysos (OH 45–47 and OH 50–53), particularly as the divine child, and ends with a hymn dedicated to the traditional thiasos of the god (OH 54). Various Dionysian themes are interwoven in this grouping; imagery and concepts merge and blur the identities of the addressees. These hymns occupy the central portion of the collection and most likely the ritual itself.

  For more on Dionyos’ role in myth and religion, see Burkert 1985, pp. 161–167, and Larson 2007, pp. 126–143; for Dionysos and Orphism, see Graf/Johnston 2007, passim. There are three Homeric hymns dedicated to this god (nos. 1, 7, 26).