Orphic Hymns

The Orphic Hymns are a collection of eighty-seven ancient Greek hymns addressed to various deities, which were attributed in antiquity to the mythical poet Orpheus. They were composed in Asia Minor, most likely around the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD, and were used in the rites of a religious community which existed in the region. The Hymns are among the few extant works of Orphic literature, and recent scholars have observed parallels between the collection and other Orphic works.
The collection is preceded by a proem, in which Orpheus addresses the legendary poet Musaeus, and calls upon around seventy deities to be present. The individual hymns in the collection, all of which are brief, typically call for the attention of the deity they address, before describing them and highlighting aspects of their divinity, and then appealing to them with a request. The descriptions of deities consist primarily of strings of epithets, which make up a substantial portion of the hymns' content, and are designed to summon the powers of the god. The deity featured most prominently in the collection is Dionysus, who is the recipient of eight hymns, and is mentioned throughout the collection under various names. Most of the deities featured in the Hymns are derived from mainstream Greek mythology, and a number are assimilated with one another.
The Orphic Hymns seem to have belonged to a cult community from Asia Minor which used the collection in ritual, and probably held Dionysus as their central god. The rite in which the Orphic Hymns featured was the , and this ceremony appears to have taken place at night-time. Most hymns specify an offering to be made to the deity, which was probably burned during the performance of the hymn. Scholars have noted the apparent lack of Orphic doctrines in the Hymns, though certain themes and references have been interpreted as pointing to the presence of Orphic thought in the collection.
No external references to the Orphic Hymns survive from antiquity, and they are first mentioned by the Byzantine writer John Diaconus Galenus. From perhaps as early as the 5th century AD, the Orphic Hymns were preserved in a codex which also included works such as the Orphic Argonautica and the Homeric Hymns. The first codex containing the Orphic Hymns to reach Western Europe arrived in Italy in the first half of the 15th century, and in 1500 the first printed edition of the Hymns was published in Florence. During the Renaissance, a number of scholars believed that the collection was a genuine work of Orpheus, while in the late 18th century a more sceptical wave of scholarship argued for a dating in late antiquity. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of inscriptions were discovered in Asia Minor, leading to the ritual function of the collection being established among classicists and historians of religion.

Composition and attribution

Provenance and date

It is widely accepted in modern scholarship that the Orphic Hymns were composed in Asia Minor. The most significant piece of evidence linking the collection to this region is the inclusion of deities - such as Mise, Hipta, and Melinoë - who are attested only in western Asia Minor, and whose presence in inscriptions from the area indicate they were the subject of worship there. The prominence given in the collection to deities associated with the sea, as well as the concern displayed towards the sea and its perils, indicate that the Hymns were probably composed somewhere near the coast of Asia Minor.
In 1911, Otto Kern postulated that the Hymns originated from the city of Pergamon, on the basis of a number of inscriptions, dedicated to deities addressed in the Hymns, which had been discovered in the sanctuary of Demeter in the city. Evaluating Kern's hypothesis in her 2001 study of the Hymns, Anne-France Morand concludes that, although an origin in Pergamon cannot be ruled out, the city cannot be definitively identified as the collection's place of provenance, given that the epigraphic evidence connected with the Hymns originates from throughout western Asia Minor. There is near-universal agreement in modern scholarship that the Orphic Hymns were composed for use by a religious community, which existed in the region and used the collection in ritual. Kern argued that this group existed in Pergamon at the sanctuary of Demeter, a view which Morand dismisses, as the site of the cult's activity was more likely private.
Estimates for the date of the Orphic Hymns composition have varied widely, though most have fallen between the 2nd century BC and the 5th century AD. Among recent scholars, the collection has typically been dated to around the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD. Studies of the collection's vocabulary suggest a date around the 3rd to 5th centuries AD, and attempts to date the Hymns based upon the perceived influence of certain forms of philosophical thought have been largely inconclusive. No references to the Orphic Hymns survive from antiquity, though modern scholars have largely avoided arguing for a date on this basis.
Gabriella Ricciardelli, who supports a date in the 2nd or 3rd century AD, points to the prominence of the worship of Dionysus in Asia Minor around this time. Morand places the Hymns between the 2nd and 5th centuries AD, though this dating has been criticised for placing undue weight upon the similarity of the collection's vocabulary with that of the 5th-century AD poet Nonnus. In Radcliffe Edmonds's estimation, the collection contains passages taken from earlier works, and may have been a "synthesis of earlier and contemporary works, organized by an Orphicist of the time". Daniel Malamis, who argues that a date in the 1st century AD should not be ruled out, suggests that the work may have been composed as an analogue to the Orphic Rhapsodies, a theogony attributed to Orpheus, typically dated to between the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD.
The identity of the poet who produced the collection is unknown, though most scholars agree that the Hymns were the product of a single author. On the basis of stylistic differences from the rest of the collection, some scholars have argued that certain hymns may have been added to the collection at a later date; Ricciardelli points to the hymn to the Moirai, as well as those to Hermes Chthonius, Mother Antaia, and Aphrodite, as examples of such hymns. Certain passages from other hymns are potentially interpolations, including two lines from the hymn to Nyx, which may have been taken from an earlier Orphic hymn to the goddess.

Attribution to Orpheus

The collection's attribution to the mythical poet Orpheus is found in the title. This title sits above the proem, an address to the legendary poet Musaeus of Athens, which marks the collection as a work of Orpheus. In antiquity, literary works were attributed to Orpheus as a way of attaching to them a special kind of authority, marking them as innovative, or deviant from the standard tradition. For the Hymns, their ascription to Orpheus would have placed them even earlier than Homer, whom Orpheus was believed to have preceded. The collection is written in the first-person voice of Orpheus, with the proem itself being the address he gives to Musaeus. In the rest of the collection, there are several passages which indicate the work was written as though composed by Orpheus: Orphic Hymn 76 to the Muses mentions "mother Calliope", and Orphic Hymn 24 to the Nereids refers to "mother Calliope and lord Apollo", alluding to the parentage of Orpheus.
The Orphic Hymns are among the few extant works of Orphic literature, the tradition of texts attributed to Orpheus in antiquity which dealt with certain themes and myths distinct from those in mainstream Greek literature. A number of scholars have brought into question how "Orphic" the Hymns can be considered, partly because of the apparent absence of references to known Orphic myths, with in 1994 characterising them as "Orphic only in name". More recently, Morand and have seen the Hymns as markedly Orphic in nature, displaying characteristics typical of Orphic texts and borrowing from the Orphic literary tradition. The Hymns contain numerous poetic formulae which are known to have been present in the Orphic Rhapsodies, and the order of the hymns in much of the collection appears to reflect that theogony's narrative. Marie-Christine Fayant sees allusions in the collection to myths which appeared in Orphic theogonies, such as the dismemberment of Dionysus and Zeus's swallowing of the hermaphroditic deity Protogonos. She also argues that in the Hymns content one can observe a cosmogony similar to that in the Hieronyman Theogony, a lost Orphic theogony possibly dating to the 2nd century BC, with which she believes the author of the Hymns was probably familiar.
The Orphic Hymns are the most important surviving representative of the genre of hymnic literature attributed to Orpheus. Examples of hymns ascribed to Orpheus are attested at least as early as the 5th century BC, and the limited surviving evidence for this genre points to such works having been short hymns which contained strings of epithets, and were created for ritual use. In Malamis's view, the author of the collection of eighty-seven hymns was probably familiar with earlier Orphic hymns, and chose to produce a work which was similar in content and style.

Structure and style

The collection begins with a text, often referred to as the proem or prologue, in which Orpheus addresses Musaeus, who is often described as his student or son in Greek literature. The proem has fifty-four lines, including the final ten which make up the hymn to Hecate. The opening two lines of the proem are a dedication in which Orpheus asks Musaeus to learn the rite and prayer. The latter refers to the address which follows on lines three to forty-four, in which around seventy different deities are called upon to attend the rite, as well as the libation . The purpose of this prayer is seemingly to name and devote a hymn to all the gods, although it addresses numerous deities not mentioned in the collection itself, and omits others who are subjects of hymns. Partly on the basis of this difference in the deities mentioned, as well as the presence of the word at the beginning and end of the proem, Martin Litchfield West posits that the proem was originally a separate Orphic poem. The idea that the proem and the rest of the collection were of distinct origins has been the more commonly held view among scholars, though Morand has recently argued for their common authorship, pointing to the similarities in the usage of epithets, and in the way deities are characterised between the two.
In addition to the proem, the Orphic Hymns consist of eighty-seven brief poems, which range from six to thirty lines in length. In the surviving manuscripts, the hymn addressed to Hecate is appended to the proem, though modern editions present it separately, as the first hymn of the collection. The hymns follow a sequence which moves from birth to death: the second hymn is addressed to Prothyraia, a goddess associated with birth, while the last is dedicated to Thanatos, and ends in the word . The collection is also arranged in such a way that primordial deities appear in the earliest hymns, and later gods are found further on; the first hymns are addressed to deities who feature in Orphic cosmogony, such as Nyx, Uranus, Aether, and Protogonos. Deities who possess similarities or are associated with one another are often placed in adjacent hymns, such as the astronomical divinities - the Stars, Sun, and Moon - or Zeus and Hera, who are linked through their marriage. The ordering of hymns also appears to correspond to the narrative of one or more Orphic theogonies, with parallels to the Orphic Rhapsodies in particular. Fayant sees a chiastic structure in the sequence of the hymns, dividing them into five groups of deities : primordial and cosmic gods, divinities presiding over human activities, Dionysus and his retinue, divinities concerned with the lives of humans, and, once again, cosmic gods. Malamis argues for a tripartite structure in which the sections open with hymns to Hecate, Hermes, and Hermes Chthonius, respectively, all of whom are associated with boundaries.
Each individual hymn in the collection has three internal parts: the invocation, the development, and the request. In some hymns, especially those shorter in length, these three parts can be difficult to distinguish, and may not occur in order. The invocation is brief, typically appears at the start of the hymn, and is designed to gain the attention of the hymn's addressee. It names the deity, and usually calls upon them with a verb, which may be in the imperative, though sometimes no such verb is present, in which case the god is simply named. The development makes up the main, central portion of the hymn, and is the longest section; it follows immediately from the invocation, with the point at which it begins often being difficult to distinguish. It consists mostly of descriptions of the deity, particularly in the form of numerous epithets, and may discuss different features or aspects of the god, as well as include information such as their familial relations, or locations in which they were worshipped; the purpose of this section is to gratify the deity so that they choose to make themselves present. The request generally finishes the hymn, and is usually only around one or two lines in length. It opens with several verbs which typically ask for the god to listen to what the speaker has to say, and for them to be present. The content of the request varies across the collection: some hymns ask the deity to come favourably, some ask for their presence at the mystery, or to accept a sacrifice; others ask for certain outcomes, such as health, prosperity, or wealth, which in some instances are specific to the god, such as the request for the Clouds to bring rain, or for Hygieia to ward off illnesses.

For the most part, the hymns in the collection are unified in their style and language. They are written in dactylic hexameter, the metre of Homeric poetry, and display a consistency in metrical composition. According to Rudhardt, in terms of vocabulary and grammar, the Hymns find a "distant model" in the works of Hesiod and Homer, but also contain words and forms from later literature, spanning from the 5th century BC to the first centuries AD. In particular, the language of the collection bears similarity to that of late works such as Nonnus's Dionysiaca, the Greek Magical Papyri, and several poems from the Greek Anthology. The most distinctive feature of the Hymns is their use of concatenations of epithets, which constitute a large part of their content. They also make extensive use of phonic repetition, as well as forms of wordplay, such as etymologies of the names of gods. Other notable stylistic elements include the frequent use of compound adjectives as epithets, the tendency to juxtapose contrasting descriptions of deities, and the use of asyndeton.