The Orphic Hymns

Love the cover art. Love the rose petal finish of the book cover. These are some of the most beautiful translations of the Orphic Hymns available today. The index is thorough and the footnotes are invaluable. These are especially moving when accompanied with music and sung in the traditional manner.

This is a very accurate and authentic translation into English of some ancient Greek Orphic hymns. There are about 36 in this collection.Some sources such as Plato mention “hymns of Orpheus” but we cannot be sure that these are the same hymns. Some scholars place the current 36 hymns at around second to fourth century.Supporting this is the fact that there is nothing remotely Christian about the hymns even though they are highly syncretic and include beliefs from all the surrounding faiths. The hymns are highly pagan. They reference divinities hardly known to Greece in the West. Many of these divinities or Asiatic Gods are from the East – Asia minor, Turkey.A maximum number of hymns are dedicated to Dionysos – seven. Zeus follows with three. Dionysos was Orphism’s supreme God. In fact, Dionysos was the most popular God of the Hellenistic era. And Orphism appears to have spread almost everywhere.It is not known whether Orpheus – the originator of Orphism – was historical or mystical. According to tradition he was not from Greece but Thrace. He was a renowned bard from a period possibly earlier than Homer and Hesiod. He played a stringed instrument called a lyre. His music was so mesmerizing that even inanimate objects swayed by its sound.It is apparent that Orphic mythology was a kind of syncretism and extension of the major mythologies of Homer and Hesiod.There is also apparently a great influence of Stoicism on Orphic beliefs. This is displayed in hymns dedicated to Ether, the Stars, Physis and others. These are all personifications of natural elements like the Rig Veda. Orphism also held on to Hesiod’s Sky, Kronos, and Zeus.Indeed, this is the main reason why I have studied these hymns. It has been acknowledged ever since Max Müller that there is an equivalence between Dyaus in the Rig Veda of India and Zeus of Greece. Zeus is 800 BC, whilst Dyaus is between 1000-1900 BC.This is one of the great and astonishing connections of ancient history that the West rarely wants to talk about. In the media, in the news, and in blockbuster movies Zeus is mentioned countless times. But rarely is it mentioned that "Great" Zeus is nothing but the ancient Rig Vedic God Dyaus, who is still in some ways revered in India.Western parochialism and religious bigotry is suffocating the truth: in ancient times East and West had very similar and overlapping beliefs. Even the names of their gods were equivalent.Indeed, the cosmogony of Orphism overlaps with the cosmogony of Vedanta and the Puranas which in turn overlap with the cosmogony of the Torah. In fact, there are 43 extraordinary parallels between the cosmic beliefs of ancient yogis in India and those of ancient Israelites. These go beyond chance.Full disclosure: I’m a peer-reviewed researcher on connections between ancient yoga and the Bible, as well as between yoga and modern science. ~ Sanjay C Patel, SanjayCPatel.com

The date of the Orphic Hymns is disputed but they seem to date from the late Hellenistic or Roman periods.Athanassakis presents a readable translation that isn' t bogged down by too many notes. The nature of Ophism is subject to many modern theories and if they were thrown in as part of the translation then that would only confuse things.It is well worth it for anyone interested in Greco-Roman religion to have a copy of this book on their shelf.

A most stunning and remarkable book whose value is not just in it's translation but it's extensive commentary. It is an absolute goldmine of reference material. An absolute must-have for many types of students of many Arts. The author's extremely approachable style makes what is still a scholarly work easy for anyone to read.

This translation of the Orphic Hymns is the best I've found by far. With small improvements over Athanassakis' 1977 translation, the 2013 edition far outstrips the traditionally used Thomas Taylor text. Where Taylor is determined to force the original Greek into rhyming verse and changes the names of the deities to their Roman equivalents, Athanassakis is true to the original Greek and the intention of the writing. I cannot recommend this highly enough. Any studies of the Orphic Hymns should come from his text.

if i could give this more than 5 stars, i would! i love this book! perfect, absolutely love it!

Very well written and lyrically correct.

This is one of the few books I've found that has the Orphic mysteries in it. As important as Eleusis in its influence the cult of Orphius was as moving as that of its Athenian counterpart and as influential on Greek society and the concept of saving ones soul.

impeccable

今まで、オルペウスの讚歌に関する翻訳はThomas Taylorによるものが圧倒的に多かったように思います。私が持っている版のTaylor訳は、韻文で、語順や行数に関してもかなり自由に変えてあり、固有名詞も英訳されており、fに似たlong-sを使って組版されているものでした。Taylor訳が悪いとか劣っているというのではなく、非英語圏の人間にとっては、翻案されたまったく別のものという印象さえ受けます。英文を検討して意味をくみ取るよりは、原文を探してきて読んだ方が早いのではないか??と思えるくらいに、私の英語力では読みこなせないものでした。こうして他の訳文の選択肢ができたということは、非常に喜ばしいことだと思います。

The translation is not bad but the format of the book needs improving. For starters, it would have been nice for the Greek text to be included. Second, rather than just using endnotes, a commentary format would have been better with footnotes instead.

I appreciate this translation much more than the one that is commonly circulated which has heavily romantic language because it has helped me to understand the Orphic hymns more as devotional texts.

I really enjoyed this book, and the fluidity of the new translations. However, I'm glad my introduction to these hymns was from the old edition, as I personally also like the somewhat archaic ring of the language there.