The Orphic Hymns

by Unknown

  7 Kypris: Another name for Aphrodite (see OH 22.7+n). Ares is often portrayed as a lover of Aphrodite, as in the somewhat risqué story of how Hephaistos captures the adulterous pair in flagrante, sung by the bard Demodokos as part of the entertainment for Odysseus at Scheria; see OH 66i. There seems to have been an Orphic version of their relationship in which Ares rapes Aphrodite (Orphic fragment 275). In one fragment from the Shorter Krater, a work attributed to Orpheus, the gods are interpreted allegorically, and Ares, who is equivalent to war, is explicitly contrasted with Aphrodite, who is made equivalent to peace (Orphic fragment 413.4).

  7 Lyaios: Another name for Dionysos; it means the “one who loosens/sets free” (see OH 50i). For the connection of music and peace, see note to line 5. The ecstatic worship of Dionysos represents a kind of madness that is kindred to the battle rage of Ares; compare the martial prowess of the possessed Bacchantes in Euripides Bacchae 714–768. It should be noted that, like Ares, Dionysos and Orpheus are said to have come from Thrace. Athene and Pan also are associated with madness and battle (see OH 32.6n).

  8–9: Agricultural works often suffer in times of war, both due to the fact that the farmer leaves his homestead to fight and that marauding armies might ravage the land as they pass through. As with music and celebration, agriculture is a mark of civilization and thus incompatible with the savagery of war. Peace nurtures the young for obvious reasons. It is illustrative to compare Tyrtaios’ admonition to the young that it is noble to die on the front lines (fragment 10) with the words of the defeated Kroisos to Kyros, the king of Persia: “No one is so foolish as to choose war over peace; for in peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons” (Herodotos 1.87.4). See also OH 40.2n.

  66. To Hephaistos

  Hephaistos, the famed blacksmith of the gods, is the son of Zeus and Hera or in some accounts just Hera, who bore him apart from Zeus in retaliation for the latter’s fathering of Athene without (direct) feminine aid (Hesiod Theogony 927–929). According to Homer, Hephaistos was cast down out of Olympos on two occasions. Once Zeus threw him out when he tried to take up the cause of his mother. All day he hurtled through the sky until he landed at the island Lemnos near sundown, where the Sinties succored the god (Iliad 1.590–594). Another time was at his very birth by Hera because she despised the fact that her son was born lame; Thetis and Eurynome kept him safe and cared for him in secret (Iliad 18.394–405 and Homeric Hymn to Apollon 3.311–325). Hephaistos eventually joins the Olympians. He takes vengeance on his mother by artfully constructing a chair that binds her fast when she sits on it. Hephaistos then conveniently skips town and thereafter refuses to return when entreated by the gods. In one version, Ares tries to free his mother but is frightened off by fires. Dionysos is dispatched. He gets the dour Hephaistos drunk, brings the wayward son home, and a reconciliation is finally reached (cf. Alkaios fragment 349, Pausanias 1.20.3, and Hyginus 166). Thus two outsiders are integrated into the society of the gods. The story was very popular in Archaic times as evidenced by the numerous vase paintings depicting the return. Perhaps the most famous one, found on the François vase, comically shows Hephaistos riding a mule amid reveling satyrs and nymphs as Dionysos leads the party to the seated Olympian gods (Boardman 1991, pl. 46.7). A tale with a somewhat similar pattern appears in Homer. In the Odyssey, the bard Demodokos sings of the adulterous affair between Ares and Aphrodite, Hephaistos’ wife. Sun acts as informant, and Hephaistos forges a net with strands so fine, that they are practically invisible. The net entraps Ares and Aphrodite the next time they make love. Hephaistos bursts on the scene and calls the gods to witness; the goddesses, we are told, stay home out of modesty. Here it is Poseidon, not Dionysos, who barely mollifies the enraged god (Odyssey 8.266–366; see also OH 65.7n). Although Aphrodite is Hephaistos’ wife in the Odyssey, it is Kharis, one of the Graces, in the Iliad and Aglaia, another one of the Graces, in Hesiod (Theogony 945–946) and an Orphic account (Orphic fragment 272). In all of these cases, there is an intended contrast, perhaps humorous, between beauty and ugliness. Even in antiquity, sometimes the geek gets the girl.

  A characteristic emphasized in the literature is the cleverness and inventiveness of Hephaistos. As a divine artisan, he creates wondrous things, e.g., exquisite jewelry, self-moving tripods, self-blowing bellows, android women of gold, watchdogs made of gold and silver (Iliad 18.372–377, 417–421, 470–473; Odyssey 7.91–94). He forges weapons and armor for Herakles (Hesiod Shield 122–140) and Akhilleus (Iliad 18.478–614); in both cases, the poet focuses on the elaborate imagery Hephaistos puts on the shield. Along with Athene, Aphrodite, and others, he fashions Pandora (Hesiod Works and Days 59–82). The mirror that the Titans use to lure Dionysos is also a product of Hephaistos (Orphic fragment 309). In the Homeric Hymn to Hephaistos he is praised as a teacher of fine crafts and skills to man, whom he thereby elevated from savagery to civilization. In this, he is similar to other trickster gods associated with fire, such as Prometheus (cf. Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 436–506) and Loki in Norse mythology; see further OH 40.8–9n. Indeed, Hephaistos was so closely associated with fire, his very name could be used as a metonymy for the element, as already in Homer (Iliad 2.426); note, too, that he is addressed as “unwearying fire” in our hymn (line 1). He is invoked by Hera to fight off the river Skamandros from Akhilleus, a battle of the elements fire and water (Iliad 21.328–382). Hephaistos also has similarities with the clever, inventive, and magical blacksmith figures in myth: the Telkhines, Idaian Dactyls, and Kabeiroi (see OH O.20–22). These last are sometimes considered to be the sons or grandsons of Hephaistos at Lemnos (cf. Herodotos 3.37).

  It is on this island that Hephaistos had significant cultic importance. Lemnos had an ancient non-Greek population. The name Hephaistos is not of Greek origin, and it is a non-Greek people, the Sinties, who Homer claimed were hospitable to the god when he fell from Olympos. We do not know much about his worship there. Philostratus, who was from Lemnos, gives a description of one ritual (Heroicus 53.5–7). It seems that every year, the hearths—and especially the smiths’ forges—were rekindled with fire brought from Delos. For nine days all fires were extinguished on the island and offerings to the dead were made, during which the ship from Delos could not land. The new fires are expressly said to start the new life of the community. The only other place in antiquity where Hephaistos had significant worship was at Athens, where the god was closely connected with that other divinity of skills and crafts—Athene; for details, see Plato Critias 109c–d and 112b, Burkert 1985, pp. 167–168, 220, and Larson 2007, pp. 159–160. These two divinities are joined outside Athenian cult as well, e.g., in Odyssey 6.233, Plato Protagoras 321d–322a, and Laws 920d. In one of the poems ascribed to Orpheus, it is said that the (cosmic) Kyklopes were the first artisans and they were the ones who taught Hephaistos and Athene the arts (Orphic fragment 269).

  4–5: The element fire is one of the four basic elements postulated by Empedokles, a thesis accepted by many later philosophers (see OH 5.4n and OH 15i). Fire appears to have had a central role in Herakleitos’ philosophy (cf. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983, nos. 217–220). The Stoics, influenced by Herakleitos, held that fire was the basic substance in the world and thought that the universe periodically returned to its original state in a great conflagration (see Long and Sedley 1987, pp. 274–279; see also the “ever-living fire” of Zeus’ thunderbolt in Kleanthes’ Hymn To Zeus 9–13). Ovid hints at this in passing only to playfully give an idea of what such conflagration might be like in his description of Phaethon’s failure to control the chariot of Sun (Metamorphoses 1.253–261, 2.161–313; cf. Hesiod Theogony 687–710 and 853–868). The belief that the world would end in fire is of course not limited to the Greeks; compare Ragnarök in Norse mythology and, to a more limited extent, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18:20ff. The author of the Derveni papyrus also seems to consider fire to be a constitutive element of the original state of the cosmos, and, according to him, the initial separation o
f fire into the sun is what precipitates the creation of the universe. Elsewhere in the collection, Ether, conceived as fire, is called the “best cosmic element” (OH 5.4).

  6–7: In describing the shield of Akhilleus, Homer mentions first and foremost that it is bounded by the ocean and that in its center are the sun, moon, and stars. Hephaistos forged the heaven in some Orphic accounts (Orphic fragment 274), and there might be some connection between this and the Homeric shield. The Demiurge who creates the world in Plato’s Timaeus is also an artisan and perhaps ultimately lurks behind this characterization of Hephaistos. The Greek word “dēmiourgos” literally means “worker for the people” (formed from “dēmos,” “people,” and “ergon,” “work”). It does not appear in this poem, but it could not, since the word cannot be fitted into the hexameter rhythm; the closely related word “ergastēr,” “worker,” does appear in line 4, however. There may be Stoic influence in these lines as well. The fire that was the base substance of the world was referred to them as a “designing fire” (“tekhnikon pur”), which is what initiated and sustained creation as a rational whole, as opposed to “undesigning fire” (“atekhnon pur”), which had no such generative potential (see Long and Sedley 1987, fragments 46A–D, G, and 47A, C, F, and pp. 277–278). Naturally, the ether, stars, sun, and moon, believed to be composed of the fiery element, have such associations in their respective hymns (OH 5, 7, 8, 9; and note the different order in this hymn, probably again due to metrical considerations).

  8: This line probably is referring to the central role of fire in civilization; see the introduction to this hymn. Fire was exceedingly important for everyday life; e.g., it provided light and was used in cooking and sacrifices. Compare also the hymn to Hestia, where the goddess is addressed as “mistress of ever-burning fire” (OH 84.2).

  9 you dwell in human bodies: The hymn moves in a top-down fashion: cosmic fire, cultural fire, and now individual fire. There was a belief in antiquity that the soul was composed of fire, or at least a hot element. The Stoics, for example, equated the soul with fire, and thus composed out of the same element as the cosmos. In light of lines 12–13, however, a more biological fire might be meant. Fire, heat, and warmth play a role in ancient theories of life. Among the Stoics, Kleanthes argued by analogy from the fire that constituted the life of a living being to the fire that sustained the entire cosmos, which was conceived as a living being; Khrysippos opted for the term “pneuma,” here meaning something like “hot air” (see Long and Sedley 1987 fragments 46B, G, J, 47C, O, 53X, Y, and pp. 286–287, 319). In both cases, that which constitutes celestial phenomena and the individual life is the same element, merely differing in scope. It is perhaps worth remembering in this context that human beings in the Orphic cosmogony are created from the Titans who were incinerated by Zeus’ lightning bolt (see OH 37i), and Dionysos, too, can be said to have been “conceived in fire” (OH 45.1, OH 52.2). Fire and heat also are used by poets to describe emotional effects: love can burn or melt, and Sappho’s famous catalogue of the physical effects of jealousy include a “subtle fire [coursing] under the skin” (fragment 31). See also OH 5.3, OH 10.27+n, and OH 18.9n.

  12: Fire brings many benefits to man, yet it is also destructive (cf. “all-eating” in line 5), as in the case of the thunderbolt that kills Semele but leads to Dionysos’ birth. Hephaistos, too, has two sides to his personality. He can play the role of jester, as when he hobbles around to excite laughter from the gods and defuse a tense situation between Zeus and Hera (Iliad 1.595–600); on the other hand, as mentioned in the introduction to this hymn, he is also susceptible to anger. As often in the collection, an ambiguous deity is asked to come in his beneficial guise while putting aside his deleterious nature.

  67. To Asklepios

  Asklepios seems to have originally been a hero-physician from Thessaly. He is first mentioned in Homer as the father of the “good doctors” Makhaon and Podaleirios (Iliad 2.731–732). In myth, he is usually the son of Koronis and Apollon (see Homeric Hymn to Asklepios 16.2–3). Before he was born, though, Koronis marries or has an affair with a mortal. Apollon learns about this and sends his sister Artemis to kill the pregnant Koronis. However, when the corpse of Koronis is on the pyre, Apollon takes pity on his unborn son and rescues him. The boy is entrusted to the wise centaur Kheiron, who instructs him in the arts of medicine. Asklepios becomes the world’s greatest physician, but he runs afoul of Zeus by bringing a dead man back to life. Zeus punishes this transgression by kerblasting Asklepios with a lightning bolt. For the story, see Pindar Pythian Odes 3, Ovid Metamorphoses 2.600–634, and Apollodoros 3.10.3. Apollodoros lists a number of individuals claimed by various sources to be the person Asklepios resurrects, including Hymenaios by the “Orphics” (see further Orphic fragment 365).

  Asklepios later came to be regarded as divine, and he might originally have been a god who was “demoted” to a hero by the time of Homer. He had important cults at Epidauros and Kos, and people would come to his temples for healing. One notable (though not exclusive) feature of Asklepian cult is incubation. Here the worshippers would spend the night in the god’s temple in the hopes of receiving a dream vision that would be accompanied by healing (see also OH 86i). Examples in literature include Aristophanes’ comedy Wealth, where the eponymous figure is cured of his proverbial blindness by undergoing such a ritual, and the fourth mimiambus of Herodas. The last words of Sokrates are to Krito, asking him to offer a rooster to Asklepios, a fitting gesture for one who cheerfully looked on death as a release of the soul from the prison of the body (Plato Phaedo 118a). The tragic poet Sophokles is said to have played a role in bringing Asklepios’ cult from Epidauros to Athens (ca. 420 BC). For more on the cult of Asklepios, see Burkert 1985, pp. 267–268, and Larson 2007, pp. 192–195. See also OH 9i.

  Our hymn has very little connection with the mythological account or traditional cultic worship. Instead, it focuses on the soteriological aspect of the one who brings healing in a world filled with pain and suffering. Health is one of the material benefits that are a recurring concern in the collection (see OH 68i). For the placement of this hymn in the collection, see OH 69i.

  1 Paian: For this name/title of Apollon, see OH 34.1n. The alternate form Paion is used of Herakles, who is also portrayed as a healer in his hymn (see OH 12.10+n). It is possible that just as Herakles’ divine portion in myth is transferred to Olympos upon the immolation of his physical body and then deified (see OH 12i), so, too, perhaps there was an account now lost to us where Asklepios, immolated by Zeus’ lightning, undergoes a similar process. Semele, the mother of Dionysos, was also deified after being struck by Zeus’ lightning (see OH 44i). See also note to line 5.

  2 charm away the pains: Asklepios is similarly described in his Homeric hymn (16.4) and in Pindar Pythian Odes 3.51–52. Musical incantations were used in healing (see West 1992, pp. 32–33), and it is a commonplace in Greek literature that music brings temporary relief to cares and worries (e.g., Hesiod Theogony 55). It might be that Apollon’s role as musician led to his being associated with the healing arts; see OH 34i.

  4: For the collocation of sickness and the inevitability of death, see Sophokles Antigone 361–364 (“for death alone/he [man] will not find an escape,/but escapes from invincible diseases/he has contrived”); also see Euripides Alkestis 963–972, which mentions the inability of Orpheus (or his poetry) and the “sons of Asklepios” (i.e., the Hippocratics) to ward off Necessity (i.e., death). One could interpret this line in a provisionary sense; insofar as Asklepios can heal fatal diseases, he consequently “puts an end to death,” albeit temporarily. Another possibility is to understand “harsh” as being emphasized. The end of this hymn asks the divinity to “bring life to a good end,” which might be construed as requesting a painless one at a ripe old age (cf. OH 87.12+n); a similar idea is to be found in the following hymn (OH 68.9+n). Thus, the “harsh fate of death” would refer to death by disease. Given the last line of the hymn, it probably does not allude to the rewards in
the afterlife the initiates might have expected to receive.

  5 spirit of … growth: The Greek word translated here is used elsewhere of Earth (OH 26.3), Eleusinian Demeter (OH 40.10), and, most notably, Adonis (OH 56.6), who also is killed and reborn (albeit as a flower). Dionysos, too, is closely tied to vegetation; see OH 30i and OH 50.5n. Indeed, there is some overlap in the stories of his and Asklepios’ birth. Both have a mother killed by a jealous divinity, both are pulled out of fire by their father before being born, and both are given to wise hybrid creatures to be raised (Kheiron the centaur in the case of Asklepios, Silenos in the case of Dionysos; see OH 54.1+n). This affinity further enhances Asklepios’ soteriological appeal. See also note to line 1 and OH 68.1n.

  6 son of Phoibos Apollon: This accords with the accounts of Asklepios, and it is the only explicit mythical detail in this brief hymn. On the other hand, there are a number of instances in this hymn where a word is reminiscent of a cult epithet of Apollon in his capacity as healer. First, Asklepios is called Paian (line 1) and “savior” (line 8), as is the Apollon of cult. The phrase “you ward off evil” (line 5) is a translation of a single word, “apalexikakos,” which is a compound form of the word “alexikakos,” another cult epithet of Apollon. Similarly, “helper” (“epikouros”) at line 5 is closely related to the cult title “epikourios.” Both of these words appear only here in the collection.

  68. To Hygeia

  Hygeia, also spelled Hygieia (e.g., OH 67.7), is the Greek word for “health,” and, as with many other abstractions, has been vaguely personified as a goddess. She is usually conceived as the daughter of Asklepios, but she exceptionally is said to be his wife in the previous hymn. In Orphic fragment 262, she is the child of Eros (Love) and Persuasion; both of these deities are usually connected with Aphrodite (see OH 55.9n), and it is possible that the placement of the Asklepios/Hygeia pair of hymns was due to this association (see OH 69i; note, too, the overlap between Asklepios and Adonis, for which see OH 67.5n). We have the opening of a poem by Likymnios, a late fifth-century poet, addressing her as “glistening-eyed mother most high, / desired queen of the august seats of Apollon, / soft-smiling Hygieia” (PMG 769). Her worship was closely tied to that of Asklepios, but she was not always subordinate to him; at Sikyon (Pausanias 2.11.6), for example, women dedicated their hair and scraps of clothing to her cult statue. It is notable that a native of Sikyon, the poet Ariphron (late fifth or early fourth century BC), wrote a paian to Hygieia (PMG 813); he calls her the “most revered of the blessed ones” and avers that all human happiness requires her. Asklepios does not appear in it, although it is possible that the poem as we have it is only a fragment. In Athens, Hygieia could be invoked along with Zeus and Agathos Daimon (Good Divinity; see OH 73i) in libations poured after the washing of the hands and before the drinking in the symposium. Athene was also worshipped as Health at Athens (see OH 32.16n). In the Hippocratic oath, her name follows that of Asklepios. It is also possible that the placement of this hymn intentionally echoes the Hippocratic order, but more likely it just follows the usual practice of our composer to place hymns to subordinate divinities (here a male/female pair) after the more important member (see further OH 14.8–9n).