The Orphic Hymns

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  3 thyrsos-bearing: A typical attribute of Dionysos and his followers; see OH 45.5+n.

  6–9: There is a tradition that Dionysos descended into the underworld to retrieve his mother and convey her to Olympos (Pausanias 2.37.5; cf. Pindar Olympian Odes 2.25–28 and the comic parody in Aristophanes Frogs, in which Dionysos goes to fetch the recently-departed playwright Euripides). Here, though, it seems that Persephone has received her kindly in the underworld. Semele might originally have been an earth goddess, and these lines might be an indirect remnant of this tradition. The “ritual of the table” is obscure. Perhaps it is related to the myth mentioned in the introduction to the hymn that has Zeus feeding Semele Dionysos-soup. Note the phrase “all mortal men reenact your travail,” which of course suggests birth, and it would certainly be easier for a worshipper to drink soup in a ritual context than to be set on fire (see also OH 47.5n). The idea of ingesting the god is already bound together with his role as god of wine and the concept of enthousiasmos (see OH 30i). See also Graf/Johnston 2007, p. 156.

  45. Hymn to Dionysos Bassareus and Triennial

  Dionysos is already the addressee of OH 30, but this hymn is the first of a series dedicated to a specific cultic identity of Dionysos. Here he is invoked as Bassareus and Triennial; cf. OH 52, which is addressed to Triennial and which mentions Bassaros in line 12, a variant of Bassareus. This epithet is derived from the Thracian word “bassara,” “fox” and, by extension, the fox-skin worn at times by the god and his maenads. Thracian maenads could be called Bassarids, and a lost play by Aeschylus bears their name as a title. In this play, it seems they tear apart Orpheus, who, incidentally, is their countryman. The violence mentioned in our hymn might very well have been influenced by this play, although by now the violent death of Orpheus had become a literary standard. In any case, it is possible that the Thracian connection induced our poet to include a hymn addressed to Dionysos Bassareus. Bassarids are first mentioned by Anakreon (PMG 411b), who also uses a related verb, “anabassareō,” to indicate reveling at a symposium (PMG 356a). This hymn continues the birth theme (see OH 44i) and alludes to maenadic ritual in lines 3–5. It is not difficult to conceive a period of joyous shouting, dancing, and brandishing of thyrsi (perhaps limited to the female initiates, if there were any) that was intended to be symbolic at the rite when this hymn was performed; see also OH 52i and OH 54i.

  1 bull-faced god conceived in fire: For Dionysos’ relationship to bulls, see OH 30.3–4+n. “Conceived in fire” would appear to refer to his traditional birth from Semele (see OH 44i and OH 30.2n).

  2 many-named: For a list of the names used of Dionysos in the collection, see OH 50.2n.

  3 bloody swords: Not a weapon normally associated with Dionysos. Plutarch tells us of a rite in which women who represented the Minyads, the daughters of Minyas who had rejected Dionysos (see note to line 5, “wrathful in the extreme”), were pursued by a priest armed with a sword (Quaestiones graecae 299c–300a). There are a number of Attic vases from the first half of the fifth century BC that portray Orpheus being killed by Thracian women who wield all sorts of weapons, including swords (see Bundrick 2005, pp. 116–126). The violence of the god is further alluded to in line 5. See also OH 30.4+n (“warlike”).

  3 holy Maenads: See the introduction to this hymn.

  4: For a picture of Olympians celebrating Bacchic frenzy, see Pindar fragment 70b.6–21. Loudness is a characteristic of Dionysos and his worship; see OH 30.1+n.

  5 thyrsos: The thyrsos is a wand topped with a pine cone that is sometimes wrapped in ivy. The shaft can be made from the fennel stalk; see OH 42.1 and Euripides Bacchae 147. It is one of the most widespread attributes of Dionysian worship, frequently mentioned in literature and often depicted in iconography. In the context of discussing initiation, Plato gives a prose quotation vaguely attributed to “the followers of the mysteries” that “the fennel-stalk bearers [narthēkophoroi] are many, the bacchoi few” (Phaedo 69c = Orphic fragment 576), which seems to point to a distinction between general worship of Dionysos (maenadism?) and the more restricted mystery cults that require initiation, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries (see also Graf/Johnston 2007, p. 143). The thyrsos is sometimes used as a weapon, e.g., by Dionysos in the Gigantomachy or by a maenad repelling the licentious advances of a satyr in vase paintings (e.g., Boardman 1975, pl. 313). See also OH 44.3, OH 50.8, and OH 52.4.

  5 wrathful in the extreme: Examples of Dionysos’ wrath abound in mythology, particularly in a group of myths that involve the rejection of his worship. Some of the more famous victims include Lykourgos, the Thracian king who hounded Dionysos and his maenads (Iliad 6.130–140), Pentheus and the women of Thebes (Euripides Bacchae), the daughters of Minyas, who eschewed going to the mountains to worship the god (Ovid Metamorphoses 4.1–40 and 390–415; also see the Plutarch citation in note to line 3), and the daughters of Proitos, who in some versions of their story also refuse Dionysos (Apollodoros 2.2.2). Orpheus himself experienced the god’s wrath after rejecting him, being ripped apart (sparagmos) by maenads and/or the Bassarids (see OH 52i). See also OH 30.4+n and OH 47i.

  7 leaping god: Leaping, frolicking, gamboling, prancing—all these are typical expressions of abandon in ecstatic cult; Dionysos himself often leads the wild processionals (see, e.g., OH 52.3–4 and 7–8). Other related figures described in similar terms are Pan (OH 11.4), the Nereids (OH 24.7), the Kouretes (OH 31.1), and the Nymphs with Pan (OH 51.8). Note that all of these are groups, save Pan, who, like Dionysos, can function as chorus-leader. The leaping may have fertility connotations like the “leaping” in the Palaikastro hymn to Zeus does (see OH 31i). Dionysos is called the “dancer” at OH O.8, and his “feet quiver in the dance” at OH 46.4.

  46. To Liknites

  This hymn is addressed to Dionysos Liknites (Dionysos of the cradle), who is also mentioned in OH 52.3. The title “Liknites” comes from the Greek word “liknon,” the primary meaning of which is “winnowing-fan.” This was a common cult object in Dionysian mysteries, well-attested in vase paintings (e.g., Boardman 1989, pl. 233) and often containing a phallus; see Graf/Johnston 2007, p. 148, and compare the story of Korybas’ murder (OH 39i). There are hints in later writers of a story in which the goddess Hipta places a winnowing fan on her head, wreathes it with a snake, and receives the infant Dionysos in it after he is born from Zeus’ thigh (Orphic fragment 329); this coheres with her role as nurse of Dionysos in our collection (see OH 49.1). An enigmatic vase painting from the Classical period might be depicting a variant of this account (Boardman 1989, pl. 157; for discussion, see Loucas 1992); here, a woman (Hipta?) is bearing a covered winnowing-basket to two seated gods, who might be Sabazios and Kybele (see also OH 49i).

  Dionysos was worshipped as Liknites at Delphi, and Plutarch tells us that it was believed his remains had been brought there (De Iside et Osiride 365a). This dovetails with one version of the Orphic myth of the Titans’ dismemberment of Dionysos where it is Apollon who gathers the remains of his half-brother and buries them on Parnassos (Orphic fragment 322). Plutarch further says that the Holy Ones perform a secret sacrifice in Apollon’s temple when Liknites is awakened by the Thyiads, a group of Attic women who performed maenadic rituals for Dionysos every other year on the slopes of Parnassos (see OH 52i and OH 53i; see further Plutarch Mulierum virtutes 249e–f and De primo frigido 953d). Dionysos was the most important deity at Delphi for three months in the winter, when Apollon was thought to be vacationing up north among the Hyperboreans. There is also some obscure testimony that Dionysos was at Delphi before Apollon, perhaps even identified with Python, the serpent Apollon kills (for Python, see OH 34.3n; for the identification of Dionysos and Python, see Fontenrose 1959, pp. 374–379). For more information on the worship of Dionysos at Delphi, see West 1983, pp. 150–152, and Larson 2007, pp. 137–138; cf. also OH 79.7–10n. Our hymn does not appear to refer explicitly to the Delphic Liknites, but for the sleeping Dionysos, see OH 53.2–3+i. The theme of birth continues in this hymn. It also adds
the notion of vegetation (“blossoming” in line 2), which is further developed in some of the following hymns, thus highlighting Dionysos’ connection with plant-life (see further OH 50i). There is no explicit mention of a ritual, but the name itself implies one, and it can easily be imagined that at this stage of the rite a winnowing-basket was brought in and/or its contents revealed (see OH 47i).

  2–3: The Nymphs rear Dionysos already in Homer (Iliad 6.132) and are found throughout the collection in this capacity (see OH 30.8n). Apollonios of Rhodes recounts that a specific nymph, Makris, received the infant Dionysos (Argonautika 4.540 and 1131–1140). For other nurslings of nymphs, see OH 51.3n. Hipta, too, is called the “nurse of Bacchos” (OH 49.1), while sometimes it is his aunt Ino, among others, who rears the child after her sister perishes (see OH 44i). Nysa is the name of a number of mountains in Asia Minor, and it is where Dionysos is often said to have been reared by the Nymphs; see the two shorter Homeric hymns to Dionysos (1.6–9, where Nysa is situated in Egypt [cf. Herodotos 2.146.2]) and 26.3–9, as well as Apollodoros 3.4.3 and OH 51.15. Its appearance here stresses Dionysos’ Eastern associations, as do Sabazios and Hipta, the addressees of the two hymns after the next, respectively; note, too, that a winnowing basket seems to have been a part of Sabazios’ mysteries, at least in Athens (see OH 48i). In ancient etymologies Nysa was used to explain Dionysos’ name (for a somewhat technical discussion, see West 1978, pp. 373–375, with further references). The Homeric Hymn to Demeter locates the abduction of Persephone in the Nysian field (2.17) but gives no indication where this field might be in the world. The mention of Aphrodite suggests an identification with Adonis; see further note to lines 6–7.

  4 quiver in the dance: For Dionysos as a dancing god, see OH 45.7n and OH 52i.

  5: Compare the short Homeric Hymn to Dionysos (no. 26) and see OH 51.15–16n.

  6–7: Persephone is often the mother of Dionysos in Orphic mythology, but here she is the ultimate nurse of the child Dionysos, just as she is the nurse of Aprhodite’s son Adonis (compare line 3 and see OH 56i). This would seem to contradict other hymns in the collection where she is explicitly the mother of Dionysos (e.g., OH 30.6–7), and it is possible that we have a vague reference to a tradition that retained Semele as the conventional mother of Dionysos and worked in Persephone as his most important nurse. For the problem of reconciling the birth of Dionysos from both Semele and Persephone in Orphism, see OH 30.2n and OH 44i.

  7 loved by the deathless gods: The manuscripts have “feared” instead of “loved,” which is odd since Dionysos quickly became an accepted member of the Olympic pantheon (e.g., for fetching Hephaistos; see OH 66i). If “feared” should be retained, perhaps comparable is Alexander’s mother, Olympias, who scared men with tamed snakes coming out of winnowing-baskets (Plutarch Alexander 2.9); compare Pan’s birth (OH 11i). On the other hand, this idea of fear might just be a generic reference to the kind of horror Dionysos can effect (as at the end of Euripides’ Bacchae); compare the “bloody swords” and “wrathful to the extreme” in OH 45.3 and 5.

  47. To Perikionios

  This hymn, like the previous one, is addressed to Dionysos in one of his particular ritual manifestations, albeit one rather obscure to us. “Perikionios” means “twined round the pillar,” and the only reference to this title comes from a scholiast to Euripides Phoenician Women 651, who cites the late third- or early second-century historian Mnaseas (fragment 18). The brief notice states that after the palace of Kadmos had been blasted by Zeus’ lightning, ivy enveloped it to protect the infant therein; thus Dionysos was called Perikionios among the Thebans. Our poet might very well have had something like this in mind, especially if it is Dionysos who causes the ivy to cover the palace in the original myth (cf. line 2). It is possible that some confusion has occurred; our composer might have been influenced inadvertently by the story of Dionysos and the pirates, where as part of his epiphany ivy covers the sail and mast of their ship (Homeric Hymn to Dionysos 7.38–42). The far distance of our cult from Thebes could have facilitated such a misunderstanding. Perhaps related is Pausanias’ account of the Thebans’ claim that after Semele had been struck by the thunderbolt, a log fell down from heaven and that subsequently a certain Polydoros (Semele’s brother in some sources) decked it out in bronze and called it Dionysos Kadmeios (9.12.3). This is Theban cult, but a number of Athenain vase paintings show a pole or column outdoors on which is affixed a mask of Dionysos (bearded) with other accoutrements (e.g., Boardman 1989, pl. 24). There are scenes of women around it handling wine or dancing wildly (sometimes with satyrs); see Larson 2007, p. 135. One in particular might have some (albeit indirect) relevance for our collection. On one side the mask of Dionysos lies in a liknon among ivy with two women standing around, one carrying a basket of fruit, the other a wine decanter (see Boardman 1989, pl. 233). This probably represents the stage before the mask is ritually affixed to the column. It is perhaps not a coincidence, then, that this hymn follows the one addressed to Dionysos Liknites and part of the rite performed by our initiates might have consisted of a mask of Dionysos being carried to a column, accompanied by the initiates’ singing the previous hymn to Liknites, and then the incense offering being given as this hymn was sung. That is not to say that our cult had preserved a centuries-old form of worship unchanged. It is more likely that certain types of Dionysian worship were adopted and adapted in Orphic (and other) circles (compare the notion of the bricoleur in Graf/Johnston 2007, pp. 70–71 and passim; cf. also OH 4i). It is also a possibility that a rite might have been invented or an older one altered in later times on the basis of literary sources (see note to line 5) or under the influence of a local indigenous cult through an identification with a Hellenic divinity. Regardless of how the rite came to be and what exactly it entailed, it is difficult to see why a hymn to such an obscure figure as Dionysos Perikionios might have been composed for our collection unless it had some sort of immediate ritual significance for the cult.

  1: For Dionysos as wine god, see OH 50i.

  5: Who is “everyone” and why were they tied up? The hymn seems to refer to a single specific event, and up to this point the one that makes the most sense is the first “birth” of Dionysos at the death of Semele. Imprisonment, however, is not part of that story. Another possibility is suggested by a comparison to Euripides Bacchae. While there is no explicit connection in terms of language, and while Euripides mentions the palace of Pentheus and not Kadmos, nonetheless in the play Dionysos first causes an earthquake and then sets his mother’s grave on fire with lightning bolts (576–603). The latter detail is certainly an explicit allusion to Dionysos’ birth, the legitimacy of which is called in question at the outset of the play. Afterward we find out how Dionysos tricked Pentheus in order to escape his earlier imprisonment (604–641). Our poet seems to have grafted some literary antecedents to the particular ritual act that this hymn accompanies. The vivid details stir the imagination of the participants. In essence, the performance of this hymn recreates a mythic scenario, composed of the birth of Dionysos (compare the ritual of the table mentioned in OH 44.6–9+n) and aspects of his epiphanies found in previous literature. The “everyone” then would be the initiates, and the “bonds” a metaphor for their previous uninitiated life. Dionysos, a deity of transitional states (see OH 30i), is often connected with freedom and release (see OH 50i); indeed, the Romans called him Liber (“the free one”).

  48. To Sabazios

  Sabazios was a Phrygian god. His worship is first attested to have reached Greece by the end of the fifth century. Aristophanes mentions him in a number of contexts. Two guards attribute their sleepiness to him, probably because of intoxication (Wasps 9–10). His mysteries are mentioned in the context of female ecstatic worship (Lysistrata 387–390), and he is mentioned alongside Kybele in a list of gods related to birds (Birds 873–875). One fragment, from the play Seasons, calls him Phrygian and a player of the aulos (fragment 578), an instrument particularly connected to Dionysian ecstatic wo
rship. Demosthenes gives us some insight into the practice of his cult in fourth-century Athens, although we need to take his account with a grain of salt because he is trying to smear his rival Aeschines (18.259–260; see also Orphic fragment 577). While Sabazios is not explicitly named as the god of this cult, the latter is invoked with the cry “euoi, Saboi,” and Strabo explicitly links the cult to Sabazios and Kybele (10.3.18). There are a number of Dionysian elements present: ivy, winnowing-basket (see OH 46.2–3n), fawn-skins, ecstatic dancing and singing. Initiations are mentioned, and one element that stands out is the handling of live snakes (also an element in some Dionysian cults; see also OH 46.7n). Sabazios’ name appears in Orphic contexts, although he is not attested in any of the fragments attributed to Orpheus. He is identified with Dionysos as the son of Zeus and Persephone (Diodorus Siculus 4.4.1), and Clement of Alexandria mentions his mysteries in the context of Zeus mating with Persephone in the form of a snake (Protrepticus 2.16.2). For the possible influence of Sabazios’ worship on this Orphic genealogy, see West, 1983, pp. 97 and 110. However, the importance of Sabazios in Asia Minor also allowed his identification with Zeus, as in our hymn, which retains the Dionysian connection by making Sabazios the father of Dionysos (but see OH 49.2n); interestingly enough, the historian Mnaseas called Sabazaios the son of Dionysos (fragment 36). Among the four inscriptions dedicated to “mother Hipta,” Sabazios-Zeus is mentioned in three of them (see OH 49i). This hymn fits the birth theme that is prominent in this central Dionysian group (see OH 44i) and, with the following hymn, forms a male-female pairing, a familiar pattern in the collection (see OH 14.8–9n). That two divinities from Phrygia in Asia Minor are given such a prominent position is a strong indication that our cult was also located in this region.