Good Works Translation from Ancient Greek

This page translates Kern fragment 220 from the Orphic Sacred Discourses in Twenty-Four Rhapsodies. The witness is Olympiodorus on Plato's Phaedo: the Orphic sequence of four kingships, Dionysus' succession after Zeus, the Titans' attack on Dionysus, and the explanation of human embodiment from the soot of the thunderstruck Titans.

Translation

Kern Fr. 220 — The Titanic Soot and the Dionysiac Body

Olympiodorus says that, in Orpheus, four kingships are handed down. First is the kingship of Heaven, which Kronos received in succession after cutting off the genitals of his father. After Kronos, Zeus became king, casting his father down into Tartarus. Then Dionysus received the succession after Zeus.

They say that, through Hera's plot, the Titans around Dionysus tore him apart and tasted his flesh. Zeus grew angry at them and struck them with thunderbolts. From the soot of the vapors that rose from them, matter was made, and human beings came to be.

Therefore we must not take ourselves out of life. This is not because, as the words seem to say, we are in some bond, namely the body; that is plain, and he would not have called that a secret teaching. Rather, we must not take ourselves out because our body is Dionysiac. We are a part of Dionysus, if indeed we are composed from the soot of the Titans who tasted his flesh.

Kern compares the Orphic Hymn to the Titans:

Titans, bright children of Earth and Heaven,
forefathers of our fathers, dwelling beneath the earth
in Tartarean houses, in the recess of the ground,
beginnings and springs of all much-suffering mortals,
of sea-born beings, winged beings, and those who dwell on the earth:
from you every generation throughout the ordered world comes.
I call on you to send away harsh anger,
if any has drawn near the houses from the ancestors below the earth.

Colophon

This Good Works translation was made from Otto Kern's Orphicorum fragmenta (Berlin: Weidmann, 1922), fr. 220, in the section headed "Hieroi logoi en rhapsodiais ka'." Kern's numbering is retained.

The source witness translated here is Olympiodorus, Commentary on Plato's Phaedo, with the related Orphic Hymn to the Titans as printed by Kern.

Source Text

Kern Fr. 220 — Olympiodorus

Olympiodorus, Commentary on Plato's Phaedo:

παρὰ τῶι Ὀρφεῖ τέσσαρες βασιλεῖαι παραδίδονται· πρώτη μὲν ἡ τοῦ Οὐρανοῦ, ἣν ὁ Κρόνος διεδέξατο ἐκτεμὼν τὰ αἰδοῖα τοῦ πατρός· μετὰ δὲ τὸν Κρόνον ὁ Ζεὺς ἐβασίλευσε καταταρταρώσας τὸν πατέρα· εἶτα τὸν Δία διεδέξατο ὁ Διόνυσος, ὃν φασι κατ' ἐπιβουλὴν τῆς Ἥρας τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν Τιτᾶνας σπαράττειν καὶ τῶν σαρκῶν αὐτοῦ ἀπογεύεσθαι. καὶ τούτους ὀργισθεὶς ὁ Ζεὺς ἐκεραύνωσε, καὶ ἐκ τῆς αἰθάλης τῶν ἀτμῶν τῶν ἀναδοθέντων ἐξ αὐτῶν ὕλης γενομένης γενέσθαι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους· οὐ δεῖ οὖν ἐξάγειν ἡμᾶς ἑαυτούς, οὐχ ὅτι, ὡς δοκεῖ λέγειν ἡ λέξις, διότι ἐν τινι δεσμῶι ἐσμεν τῶι σώματι, τοῦτο γὰρ δῆλόν ἐστι, καὶ οὐκ ἂν τοῦτο ἀπόρρητον ἔλεγεν, ἀλλ' ὅτι οὐ δεῖ ἐξάγειν ἡμᾶς ἑαυτοὺς ὡς τοῦ σώματος ἡμῶν Διονυσιακοῦ ὄντος· μέρος γὰρ αὐτοῦ ἐσμεν, εἴ γε ἐκ τῆς αἰθάλης τῶν Τιτάνων συγκείμεθα γευσαμένων τῶν σαρκῶν τούτου.

Kern's related Orphic Hymn to the Titans:

Τιτῆνες, Γαίης τε καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀγλαὰ τέκνα,
ἡμετέρων πρόγονοι πατέρων, γαίης ὑπένερθεν
οἴκοις Ταρταρίοισι μυχῶι χθονὸς ἐνναίοντες,
ἀρχαὶ καὶ πηγαὶ πάντων θνητῶν πολυμόχθων,
εἰναλίων πτηνῶν τε καὶ οἳ χθόνα ναιετάουσιν·
ἐξ ὑμέων γὰρ πᾶσα πέλει γενεὴ κατὰ κόσμον.
ὑμᾶς κικλήσκω μῆνιν χαλεπὴν ἀποπέμπειν,
εἴ τις ἀπὸ χθονίων προγόνων οἴκοις ἐπελάσθη.