Good Works Translation from Latin

This page translates Kern fragment 244 from the section Kern heads Bacchica. The witness is Servius, with parallels in the Vatican Mythographers, explaining different opinions about the oscilla: suspended figures or ritual objects connected with Icarius, Erigone, the Athenian maidens, and rites of swinging or hanging. The passage ends by saying that one version was read in Orpheus.

Translation

Kern Fr. 244 — Icarius, Erigone, and the Oscilla

Servius says:

There are different opinions about the oscilla. Some assert this story:

Icarius the Athenian, father of Erigone, had received wine from Father Liber and made it known to mortals. He was killed by farmers, who had drunk more than their fair share and, becoming intoxicated, believed they had taken poison.

His dog returned to his daughter Erigone. She followed its tracks and came to her father's corpse. Then she ended her life by a noose.

By the will of the gods she was carried up among the stars, and they call her Virgo. The dog too was placed among the constellations.

After some time, however, such a plague was sent against the Athenians that their maidens, driven by a kind of madness, were compelled to the noose. The oracle answered that this pestilence could be calmed if the bodies of Erigone and Icarius were sought.

When they had been sought for a long time and were nowhere found, the Athenians, to show their devotion and to seem to search for them even in a different element, hung a rope from trees. Men held on to it and were swung this way and that, so that they seemed to be searching for the bodies even through the air.

But when many fell from it, a new custom was devised: they would make forms in the likeness of their own faces and move them, suspended in their place.

Others say the oscilla are male organs made of flowers. They were hung between columns, so that men, wearing covered masks, would strike against them and move them with the mouth, stirring the people to laughter.

And this was read in Orpheus, not in Lucan.

Colophon

This Good Works translation was made from Otto Kern's Orphicorum fragmenta (Berlin: Weidmann, 1922), fr. 244, in the section headed "Bacchica." Kern's numbering is retained.

The source witness translated here is Servius on Virgil's Georgics, with parallels in the Vatican Mythographers, as printed by Kern. Kern notes that Orpheus also spoke of Erigone in a work titled Georgica.

Source Text

Kern Fr. 244 — Servius

Servius on Virgil's Georgics:

oscillorum autem variae sunt opiniones; nam alii hanc asserunt fabulam. Icarus Atheniensis, pater Erigonae, cum acceptum a Libero patre vinum mortalibus indicaret, occisus est a rusticis, qui cum plus aequo potassent, deebriati se venenum accepisse crediderant. huius canis est reversus ad Erigonam filiam, quae, cum eius comitata vestigia pervenisset ad patris cadaver, laqueo vitam finivit. haec deorum voluntate inter astra relata est, quam Virginem vocant. canis quoque ille est inter sidera collocatus.

sed post aliquantum tempus Atheniensibus morbus inmissus est talis, ut eorum virgines furore quodam compellerentur ad laqueum; responditque oraculum, sedari posse illam pestilentiam, si Erigonae et Icari cadavera requirerentur. quae cum diu quaesita nusquam invenirentur, ad ostendendam suam devotionem Athenienses, ut etiam in alieno ea quaerere viderentur elemento, suspenderunt de arboribus funem, ad quem se tenentes homines hac atque illac agitabantur, ut quasi et per aerem illorum cadavera quaerere viderentur. sed cum inde plerique caderent, inventum est, ut formas ad oris sui similitudinem facerent et eas pro se suspensas moverent.

alii dicunt oscilla esse membra virilia de floribus facta, quae suspendebantur per intercolumnia ita, ut in ea homines, acceptis clausis personis, inpingerent et ea ore cillerent, id est moverent, ad risum populo commovendum. et hoc in Orpheo non Lucani lectum est.