Orphic Hymns

The Orphic Hymns are a collection of eighty-seven ancient Greek hymns addressed to various deities, which were attributed to the mythical poet Orpheus in antiquity. They were composed in Asia Minor, most likely around the time of the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD, and were used in the rites of a religious community which existed in the region. The Hymns are one of the few extant works of Orphic literature (a tradition of texts which were attributed to Orpheus in antiquity), and are largely viewed by modern scholarship as being congruent with the preceding Orphic literary tradition.

The collection of eighty-seven hymns is preceded by a proem, in which Orpheus addresses his student Musaeus, calling upon various deities to attend the recitation of the hymns. The individual hymns in the collection, which are all very brief, typically call for the attention of the deity they address, before describing them, and highlighting aspects of their divinity. These descriptions primarily consist of strings of epithets, which make up a significant portion of the hymns' content, and are designed to summon the powers of the god. Most of the deities addressed in the Hymns are derived from mainstream Greek mythology, with the notable exception of Protogonos, a decidedly Orphic deity. The god featured most prominently in the collection is Dionysus, who is the recipient of around eight hymns, and is mentioned throughout the collection, under various names. Several deities addressed in the Hymns—Mise, Hipta, and Melinoe—previously known only though the collection, were in the early 20th century discovered in inscriptions from Asia Minor.

The Orphic Hymns seem to have belonged to a cult community in Asia Minor, which used the collection in ritual. The Hymns themselves appear to reference various members of this cult, and employ the word boukólos (βουκόλος), which is often used to refer to worshippers of Dionysus. The rite in which the Orphic Hymns featured was the teletḗ (τελετή, a term which usually refers to a rite of initiation into mysteries), and this ceremony appears to have taken place at nighttime. In addition, 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 collection, including the paucity of interest in the afterlife, and the absence of explicit mentions of known Orphic myths; certain themes and references, however, have been interpreted as pointing to the presence of Orphic thought in the Hymns.

No references to the Orphic Hymns survive in other ancient sources from antiquity, with their earliest mention coming from the Byzantine writer Ioannes Galenos. From perhaps as early as late antiquity, the Orphic Hymns were preserved in a codex which also included the Orphic Argonautica and other Greek hymns such as the Homeric Hymns. The first codex containing the Orphic Hymns to reach Western Europe seems to have arrived in Italy in the early 15th century, and may be the codex from which all surviving manuscripts descend. Following the arrival of the Orphic Hymns in Renaissance Italy, the collection seems to have been relatively popular amongst the educated, and in 1500 the first edition of the Hymns was published. Other notable editions from the following centuries include those by Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann, Jenő Ábel [de], and Wilhelm Quandt.